Ex  Liferw 
C.  K.  OGDEN 


THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH 


THE 

MAKING  OF  ENGLISH 


BY 

HENRY    BRADLEY 

Hox.  M.A.  OXON.,  HON.  PH.D.  HEIDELBERG 

SOMETIME   PRESIDENT  OF   THE   PHILOLOGICAL  SOCIETY 


MACMILLAN  AND   CO.,   LIMITED 

NEW  YORK  :    THE   MACMILLAN    COMPANY 
1904 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright  in  the  United  States 
of  America,  1904. 


GLASGOW  :     PRINTED   AT   THK    UNIVERSITY    PUESS 
BY    ROBRKT    MACLKHOSE   AND   CO. 


PREFACE 

THIS  little  work  was  announced  as  in  preparation 
some  years  ago,  but  illness  compelled  me  to  lay 
it  aside  when  only  a  few  pages  had  been  written, 
and  since  then  my  health  has  seldom  permitted 
me  to  attempt  any  work  in  addition  to  my  daily 
task  as  one  of  the  editors  of  the  Oxford  English 
Dictionary.  Some  of  the  faults  of  this  volume 
may  be  due  to  the  desultory  manner  in  which  it 
has  been  composed  ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
length  of  time  that  has  elapsed  since  it  was  first 
planned  has  given  me  opportunity  for  more  care- 
ful consideration  of  difficult  points. 

The  object  of  the  book  is  to  give  to  educated 
readers  unversed  in  philology  some  notion  of  the 
causes  that  have  produced  the  excellences  and 
defects  of  modern  English  as  an  instrument  of 
expression.  With  the  history  of  the  language  I 
have  attempted  to  deal  only  so  far  as  it  bears 
on  this  special  problem.  The  subject,  even  as 
thus  restricted,  is  one  which  it  is  not  easy  to 


vi  PREFACE 

treat  briefly.  I  have,  however,  resisted  the  temp- 
tation to  enlarge  the  volume  beyond  the  limits 
originally  intended,  because  I  believe  that  for 
the  purpose  which  I  have  in  view  a  small  book 
is  more  likely  to  be  useful  than  a  large  one. 

My  thanks  are  due  to  my  friends  Professor 
Napier,  Mr.  W.  A.  Craigie,  and  Mr.  C.  T.  Onions, 
for  their  kindness  in  reading  the  proofs,  and 
suggesting  valuable  corrections  and  improvements. 

HENRY   BRADLEY. 
OXFORD,  January,  1904. 


CONTENTS 
CHAPTER  I. 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTORY  -         i 

§  i.  THE  LIKENESS  OF  GERMAN  AND  ENGLISH        i 

§  2.  DIFFERENCES     BETWEEN     GERMAN     AND 

ENGLISH  -       4 

§  3.  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  OLD  ENGLISH  -       -       7 
§  4.  OBJECT  OF  THIS  BOOK  -       -      14 

CHAPTER  II. 

THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR  -  16 

§  i.  SIMPLIFICATION  OF  ACCIDENCE  -  -  17 

§  2.  NEW  GRAMMATICAL  MATERIAL  -  53 

§  3.  PROFIT  AND  Loss  -  -  74 

CHAPTER  III. 

WHAT      ENGLISH      OWES      TO      FOREIGN 

TONGUES  - 80 


viii  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  IV. 

PAGE 

WORD-MAKING  IN  ENGLISH  in 

§  i.  COMPOSITION                                                 -  m 

§2.  DERIVATION-        ...  I28 

^§3.  ROOT-CREATION    -        -  154 

CHAPTER  V. 

CHANGES  OF  MEANING      -        -  160 

CHAPTER  VI. 

SOME  MAKERS  OF  ENGLISH  215 

INDEX 24l 


CHAPTER    I. 
INTRODUCTORY. 

§  1.  The  Likeness  of  German  and  English. 

Ax  Englishman  who  begins  to  learn  German 
cannot  fail  to  be  struck  by  the  resemblance  which 
that  language  presents  to  his  native  tongue.  Of 
the  words  which  occur  in  his  first  lessons  because 
they  are  those  most  commonly  used  in  every-day 
conversation,  a  very  large  proportion  are  recog- 
nisably  identical,  in  spite  of  considerable  differences 
of  pronunciation,  with  their  English  synonyms. 
The  following  examples  will  suffice  to  illustrate 
the  remarkable  degree  of  similarity  between  the 
vocabularies  of  the  two  languages  :  Vater  father, 
Mutter  mother,  Bruder  brother,  Schwester  sister, 
Haus  house,  Feld  field,  Gras  grass,  Korn  corn, 
Land  land,  Stein  stone,  Kuh  cow,  Kalb  calf,  Ochse 
ox,  singen  to  sing,  horen  to  hear,  haben  to  have, 
gehen  to  go,  brechen  to  break,  bringen  to  bring, 


2  THE  MAKING  OF   ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

gut  good,  wohl  well,  grim  green,  hart  hard,  blind 
blind,  ich  I,  ivir  we,  selbst  self,  hier  here,  unter 
under,  bei  by,  vor  be-fore.  At  a  very  early  stage 
of  his  progress,  the  learner  will  find  himself  able 
to  compile  a  list  of  some  hundreds  of  German 
words  which  have  an  obvious  likeness  to  the 
English  words  with  which  they  agree  in  meaning. 
In  addition  to  these  resemblances  which  lie  on 
the  surface,  there  are  many  others  which  can 
only  be  perceived  by  the  help  of  a  knowledge  of 
the  general  laws  of  correspondence  between 
German  and  English  sounds.  A  few  of  these 
general  laws  may  be  mentioned  by  way  of  illus- 
tration. An  English  /  is  usually  represented  in 
German  by  z,  tz,  or  ss ;  an  English  th  by  d ;  an 
English  /  by  pf  or  f\  an  English  d  by  / ;  and 
an  English  v  in  the  middle  of  a  word  by  b. 
There  are  similar  laws,  too  complicated  to 
be  stated  here,  relating  to  the  correspondence 
of  the  vowels.  By  the  study  of  these  laws,  and 
of  the  facts  that  are  known  about  the  history 
of  the  two  languages,  scholars  have  been 
enabled  to  prove  the  fundamental  identity  of  a 
vast  number  of  English  words  with  German 
words  which  are  very  different  from  them  in 
sound  and  spelling,  and  often  also  in  meaning. 
Thus,  for  example,  Ba.um,  a  tree,  is  the  same 


I.]  INTRODUCTORY  3 

\vord  as  the  English  '  beam  ' ;  Zaun,  a  hedge,  is 
our  '  town '  (which  originally  meant  a  place  sur- 
rounded by  a  hedge,  a  farm  enclosure) ;  Zeit,  time, 
is  our  '  tide  ' ;  drehen,  to  turn,  wind,  is  our  '  throw,5 
and  the  derivative  Draht,  wire,  is  our '  thread ' ; 
Iragen,  to  carry,  is  our  '  draw ' ;  and  so  on. 

But  it  is  not  merely  in  their  stock  of  words 
that  English  and  German  have  a  great  deal  in 
common.  In  their  grammar,  also,  they  resemble 
each  other  to  a  very  remarkable  extent.  Our 
way  of  forming  the  genitive  by  adding  s  is 
paralleled  in  many  German  words :  '  the  king'j 
house'  is  in  German  '  des  Konigj  Haus.' 
The  syllables  -er  and  -est  are  used  in  both 
languages  to  form  the  comparatives  and  super- 
latives of  adjectives.  In  the  conjugation  of  the 
verbs  the  similarity  is  equally  striking.  '  I  hear,' 
'  I  heard,'  '  I  have  heard '  are  in  German  ich  kore, 
ich  horte,  ich  habe  gehort ;  '  I  see,'  '  I  saw,'  '  I  have 
seen '  are  ich  sehe,  ich  sah,  ich  habe  gesehen  ;  '  I 
sing,'  '  I  sang,'  '  I  have  sung '  are  ich  singe,  ich 
sang,  ich  habe  gesungen  ;  '  I  bring,'  '  I  brought/  '  I 
have  brought '  are  ich  bringe,  ich  brachtey  ich 
habe  gebracht.  Our  '  thou  singest '  is  in  German 
du  singst. 

The  explanation  of  these  facts  is  not  that 
English  is  derived  from  German  or  German 


4  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

from  English,  but  that  both  have  descended, 
with  gradual  divergent  changes,  from  a  pre- 
historic language  which  scholars  have  called 
Primitive  Germanic  or  Primitive  Teutonic.  Low 
German  or  Plattdeutsch,  the  dialect  spoken 
(now  only  by  the  common  people)  in  '  Low '  or 
Northern  Germany,  is  much  more  like  English 
than  literary  High  German  is  ;  and  Dutch  and 
Frisian  resemble  Low  German.  The  Scandinavian 
languages,  Swedish,  Danish,  Norwegian,  and  Ice- 
landic, are  also  of  Germanic  (or  Teutonic)  origin  ; 
and  so  is  Gothic,  a  dead  language  known  to  us 
chiefly  from  a  translation  of  portions  of  the  Bible 
made  in  the  fourth  century. 

§  2.  Differences  between  German  and  English. 

But  while  modern  English  and  modern 
German  have  so  many  conspicuous  traces  of 
their  original  kinship,  the  points  of  contrast 
between  the  two  languages  are  equally  striking 
and  significant. 

In  the  first  place,  the  grammar,  or  rather  the 
accidence,  of  German  is  enormously  more  com- 
plicated than  that  of  English.  The  German 
noun  has  three  genders,  which  in  many  instances 
have  no  relation  to  the  sex  of  the  object  sig- 


I.]  INTRODUCTORY  5 

nified,  or  to  the  meaning  or  form  of  the  word. 
Kopf,  head,  is  masculine,  though  the  synonymous 
Haupt  is  neuter ;  Hand  is  feminine,  but  Fusz, 
foot,  is  masculine,  and  Bein,  leg,  is  neuter ;  Weib, 
woman,  and  Madchen,  girl,  are  neuter.  The 
foreign  student  of  English  has  no  such  diffi- 
culties to  encounter.  Properly  speaking,  we 
have  no  '  genders '  at  all :  we  say  '  he,'  '  she,' 
or  '  it '  according  to  the  sex,  or  absence  of 
sex,  of  the  object  to  which  we  refer.  English 
nouns  have  only  one  case-ending,  the  s  of 
the  genitive ;  and  practically  only  one  mode 
of  forming  the  plural,  as  the  few  exceptions 
can  be  learned  in  half-an-hour.  German  nouns 
have  four  cases,  and  are  divided  into  several 
declensions  each  with  its  own  set  of  inflexions 
for  case  and  number.  The  English  adjective 
is  not  inflected  at  all  ;  the  one  form  good  cor- 
responds to  the  six  German  forms  gut,  guter, 
gute,  gutes,  gutem,  guten,  the  choice  of  which 
depends  partly  on  the  gender,  number,  and 
case  of  the  noun  which  is  qualified,  and  partly 
on  other  grammatical  relations.  In  conjugating 
an  English  verb,  such  as  sing,  we  meet  with 
only  eight  distinct  forms,  sing,  singest,  sings, 
singeth,  sang,  sangest,  singing,  sung ;  and  even 
of  these,  three  are  practically  obsolete.  In  the 


6  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

conjugation  of  the  German  verb  singen  the 
number  of  distinct  forms  is  sixteen. 

In  addition  to  these  differences  in  the  gramma- 
tical systems  of  the  two  languages,  there  are 
others  no  less  noteworthy  which  relate  to  the 
character  of  their  vocabulary. 

We  have  already  pointed  out  that  of  the 
English  words  which  occur  in  familiar  conver- 
sation, the  great  majority  are  found  to  exist 
also  in  German,  with  certain  regular  variations 
of  form  due  to  the  difference  in  the  sound- 
systems  of  the  two  languages.  If,  however, 
instead  of  confining  our  attention  to  that  part 
of  the  language  that  serves  the  needs  of 
everyday  life,  we  were  to  examine  the  whole 
English  vocabulary  as  it  is  exhibited  in  a 
dictionary,  we  should  find  that  by  far  the 
greater  number  of  the  words  have  no  formal 
equivalents  in  German,  being  for  the  most 
part  derived  from  foreign  languages,  chiefly 
French,  Latin,  and  Greek.  It  is  true  that 
many  of  these  non-Germanic  words  are  very 
rarely  used ;  still,  if  we  take  at  random  a  page 
from  an  English  book  which  treats  of  history, 
politics,  philosophy,  or  literary  criticism,  the 
majority  of  the  nouns,  adjectives,  and  verbs  are 
usually  of  foreign  etymology.  An  ordinary 


I.]  INTRODUCTORY  7 

page  of  German,  on  the  other  hand,  contains 
very  few  words  that  are  not  derived  from 
native  roots.  German,  in  fact,  is,  comparatively 
speaking,  an  unmixed  language ;  modern  Eng- 
lish, so  far  as  its  vocabulary  is  concerned,  is  a 
mixed  language,  in  which  the  native  Germanic 
elements  are  outnumbered  by  those  derived  from 
foreign  tongues. 

§  3.  Characteristics  of  Old  English. 

The  differences  between  German  and  English, 
so  far  as  they  have  been  described  above}  are 
entirely  due  to  the  gradual  changes  that  have 
taken  place  in  English  during  the  last  thousand 
years.  The  ancient  form  of  our  language — the 
kind  of  English  that  was  written  by  King 
Alfred  in  the  ninth  century — had  every  one  of 
those  general  characteristics  which  we  have 
mentioned  as  distinguishing  modern  German 
from  modern  English. 

Before  proceeding  to  the  illustration  of  this 
statement,  let  us  briefly  explain  the  meaning  of 
certain  terms  which  we  shall  have  to  use.  By 

1  This  limitation  is  very  important.  It  must  not  be  imagined 
that  German  has  not  altered  greatly  during  the  last  thousand  years, 
or  that  English  and  German  did  not  already  differ  widely  from 
each  other  a  thousand  years  ago. 


8  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

'  Old  English '  we  mean  the  language  (by  some 
persons  called  '  Anglo-Saxon ')  spoken  by  Eng- 
lishmen down  to  about  1150;  'Middle  English' 
is  the  language  spoken  between  about  1150  and 
about  1500;  and  'Modern  English'  means  the 
English  of  the  last  four  centuries.  The  reader 
must  not,  however,  suppose,  as  young  learners 
sometimes  do,  that  in  1 150  or  in  1500  one  kind 
of  English  was  superseded  by  another.  The 
English  language  has  been  undergoing  constant 
change  ever  since  it  was  a  language,  and  it  is 
changing  still.  For  purposes  of  study  it  has 
been  found  useful  to  divide  its  history  into  three 
periods  ;  and  if  this  is  done  at  all,  it  is  necessary 
to  specify  some  approximate  dates  as  the  points 
of  "division.  The  dates  1150  and  1500  have 
been  chosen  because  the  one  is  the  middle  and 
the  other  the  end  of  a  century  of  the  common 
reckoning  ;  and  they  are  also  convenient,  because 
about  those  years  the  process  of  change  was 
going  on  somewhat  more  rapidly  than  usual,  so 
that  if  we  compare  a  book  written  a  quarter  of 
a  century  before  the  end  of  a  period  with  one 
written  a  quarter  of  a  century  after  it,  we  can 
see  clearly  that  the  language  has  entered  on  a 
new  stage  of  development. 

In     considering     the     characteristics     of     Old 


i.]  INTRODUCTORY  9 

English,  we  will  refer  especially  to  the  southern 
dialect  as  it  was  written  by  King  Alfred  just 
before  900.  In  the  first  place,  Alfred's  English 
had  all  the  grammatical  complexity  which  exists 
in  modern  German,  and  indeed  a  little  more. 
It  had  the  same  irrational  system  of  genders : 
hand  was  feminine,  fot  (foot)  was  masculine, 
while  mtKgden  (maiden)  and  wlf  (wife,  woman) 
were  neuter.  The  Old  English  nouns  had  five 
cases,  and  the  system  of  declensions  was  intri- 
cate to  a  degree  which  modern  German  does 
not  nearly  rival.  Some  nouns  made  their  geni- 
tive singular  in  -es,  others  in  -e,  others  in  -a, 
and  others  in  -an  •  and  in  a  few  nouns  the 
genitive  had  the  same  form  as  the  nominative. 
The  endings  which  marked  the  nominative 
plural  were  -as,  -a,  -u,  -e,  -an ;  moreover,  many 
plural  nominatives  coincided  in  form  with  the 
singular,  and  others  were  formed  (like  our  modern 
teeth  and  mice)  by  change  of  vowel.  The  adjec- 
tives had  an  elaborate  set  of  inflexions,  which 
have  now  utterly  disappeared,  so  that  the  soli- 
tary Modern  English  form  glad  represents  eleven 
distinct  forms  in  Old  English:  glted,  gltedre, 
glxdne,  gltedra,  gladu,  glades,  gladum,  glade, 
gladena,  glada,  gladan.  In  the  conjugation  of 
the  verbs  there  were  twice  as  many  different 


10  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

forms  as  there  are  in  Modern  English.  The 
persons  of  the  plural,  for  instance,  differed  in 
form  from  those  of  the  singular  :  where  we  now 
say  '  I  sing,  we  sing,  I  sang,  we  sangl  the  Old 
English  forms  were,  '  ic  singe,  we  singath,  ic 
sang)  we  sungon'  The  subjunctive  mood,  of 
which  there  are  only  a  few  traces  left  in  modern 
English,  occupied  as  prominent  a  place  in 
Old  English  grammar  as  it  does  in  Modern 
German. 

Further,  Old  English  differed  from  Modern 
English  in  being — like  Modern  German,  but  in 
a  greater  degree — comparatively  free  from  words 
of  foreign  origin.  It  had,  indeed,  incorporated  a 
certain  number  of  Latin  words,  chiefly  relating 
either  to  the  institutions  and  ritual  of  the  Church, 
or  to  things  connected  with  Roman  civilization. 
But  these  formed  only  a  very  small  proportion 
of  the  entire  vocabulary.  Even  for  the  technical 
terms  of  Christian  theology,  the  Old  English 
writers  preferred,  instead  of  adopting  the  Latin 
words  that  lay  ready  to  their  hand,  to  invent 
new  equivalents,  formed  from  native  words  by 
composition  and  derivation. 

After  what  has  been  said,  the  reader  will  not 
be  surprised  to  be  told  that  a  page,  even  of  Old 
English  prose,  not  to  speak  of  the  poetry,  has 


I.] 


INTRODUCTORY 


ii 


quite  the  aspect  of  a  foreign  language.  The 
following  specimen  is  taken  from  a  sermon  by 
who  died  about  A.D.  1025  : 

They  who  do  not  believe 
refuse  through  their  own 
choice,  not  through  fate, 
because  fate  is  nothing  but  a 
false  notion  ;  nor  does  any- 
thing truly  come  to  pass  by 
fate,  but  all  things  are 
ordered  by  the  judgment  of 
God,  who  said  by  his  pro- 
phet, '  I  try  the  hearts  of 
men,  and  their  reins,  and 
give  to  every  one  according 
to  his  conduct,  and  accord- 
ing to  his  own  device.'  Let 
no  man  impute  his  evil  deeds 
to  God,  but  let  him  impute 
them  first  to  the  devil,  who 
deceived  mankind,  and  to 
Adam's  transgression  ;  but 
chiefly  to  himself,  in  that 
evil  is  pleasure  to  him  and 
good  pleases  him  not. 


Tha  the  ne  gelyfath  thurh 
agenne  eyre  hi  scoriath,  na 
thurh  gewyrd  ;  lor-than-the 
gewyrd  nis  nan  thing  buton 
leas  wena :  ne  nan  thing 
sothllce  be  gewyrde  ne 
gewyrth,  ac  ealle  thing  thurh 
Codes  ddm  beoth  geende- 
byrde,  se  the  cwasth  thurh 
his  wltegan,  'Ic  afandige 
manna  heortan,  and  heora 
lendena,  and  aelcum  sylle 
sefter  his  faerelde,  and  setter 
his  agenre  afundennysse.' 
Ne  talige  nan  man  his  yfelan 
dSda  to  Code,  ac  talige  Srest 
t5  tham  deofle,  the  mancyn 
besvvac,  and  to  Adames 
forgajgednysse ;  ac  theah 
swlthost  to  him  sylfum,  thaet 
him  yfel  gellcath,  and  ne 
llcath  god. 


It  is  impossible  here  to  give  any  complete 
rules  for  Old  English  pronunciation  ;  but  some 
approximate  notion  of  the  sounds  of  the  language 
may  be  obtained  by  reading  the  above  passage 
according  to  the  following  directions.  Pronounce 
y  and  y  like  the  German  u  or  the  French  u 
(short  and  long),  &  like  a  in  '  hat,'  se  like  e  in 


12  THE   MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

'  there,'  and  the  other  vowels  like  the  italic  letters 
in  the  words  father  (a  not  marked  is  the  same 
sound  but  shorter),  bed,  v<?in,  pzn,  machfne,  h<?t, 
stone,  put,  rule. ;  pronounce  h  when  not  beginning 
a  syllable  like  the  German  ch,  and  f  in  gelyfath, 
yfel,  deofle,  sylfum,  as  v.  Sound  c  as  k,  except 
in  sothllce  and  ic,  in  which  the  letter  was 
pronounced  as  ch  in  '  church '  ;  sc  should  be  pro- 
nounced sh.  The  g  in  dgen,  God,  wltegan,  god, 
may  be  pronounced  (though  not  quite  correctly) 
as  in  the  modern  '  good ' ;  in  the  other  words 
in  the  extract  it  happens  to  have  the  less 
usual  sound  of  y  in  '  young.'  All  other  letters 
are  to  be  pronounced  as  in  modern  English, 
and  final  e  is  always  to  be  sounded. 

Tt  may  be  useful  to  append  a  few  remarks  on  some  of  the 
words  occurring  in  the  extract.  Tha  is  the  plural  nominative 
of  the  demonstrative  pronoun  corresponding  to  our  that ; 
the  nominative  singular  is  se  (masc.),  seo  (fern.),  thott  (neut.) ; 
the  word  serves  also  as  the  definite  article.  The  is  an 
indeclinable  relative,  standing  for  '  who,'  '  whom,'  '  which.' 
In  ge-lyf-ath  the  middle  syllable  is  the  same  as  the  second 
syllable  in  'believe';  the  verb  ge-lyf-an  corresponds  to  the 
German  g-laub-en.  Ne,  not,  is  in  Old  English  put  before 
the  verb.  With  thurh,  through,  compare  the  German  durch. 
Agenne  is  accusative  masculine  singular  of  agen  own  ;  com- 
pare the  German  eigen.  Cyre,  choice,  is  a  masc.  noun 
related  to  the  verb  ceosan  to  choose  ;  the  corresponding 
German  word  is  Kur.  Hi,  they,  is  the  plural  of  he.  Scoriath 
is  the  present  tense  plural  of  scorian,  to  refuse,  a  verb  not 


I.]  INTRODUCTORY  13 

preserved  in  modern  English  or  German.  Nd,  here  used 
for  'not,'  is  the  modern  provincial  'no'  in  'that's  no  true.' 
Ge-ivyrd,  fate,  is  the  word  which  in  later  English  became 
'weird.'  For-than-the,  because,  is  literally  ' for-that-that.' 
Nis  ( =  ne  is)  nan  thing,  '  is  none  thing ' ;  in  Old  English 
two  negatives  did  not  'make  an  affirmative,'  but  were 
combined  for  emphasis  as  in  Greek.  Leas,  false,  lying ; 
compare  'leasing,'  falsehood,  in  the  English  Bible.  Wena, 
opinion  ;  connected  with  ivenan,  to  '  ween,'  think.  Sothllce, 
'  soothly,'  truly ;  compare  '  forsooth,'  '  in  good  sooth.' 
Geivyrth,  3rd  person  sing,  of  ge-iveorthan  to  take  place, 
akin  to  the  German  werden  to  become.  Ac,  but ;  not 
found  in  modern  English  or  German.  Ealle  thing,  all 
things ;  the  word  thing  had  the  nom.  plural  like  the 
singular.  Cw&th, .the  same  word  as  'quoth.'  Wttega,  pro- 
phet ;  the  word  existed  also  in  old  German,  and  was 
corrupted  into  Weissager  (as  if  it  meant  'wise-sayer'). 
Afandige,  from  dfandian,  to  try.  Manna,  genitive  plural  of 
mann.  Heora,  genitive  plural  of  he.  AZlcum,  dative  masc. 
sing,  of  xlc,  now  '  each.'  Sylle,  give,  is  the  modern  '  sell ' ; 
the  word  has  changed  its  meaning.  Fxrelde,  dative  of 
fsereld,  behaviour ;  connected  with  the  verb  '  to  fare.' 
A-funden-nyss  (dative  -nysse),is  from  afunden  =  Ger.  erfun- 
den,  invented,  with  the  ending  -nyss,  now  -ness ;  the  word 
is  fern.,  so  that  'agen-re'  (own)  corresponds  to  the  German 
'  eigen-^r.'  Talige,  from  talian,  to  impute,  count ;  compare 
'tale.'  ^Erest,  first  =  Ger.  erst.  Mancyn,  mankind  ;  the  last 
part  of  the  compound  is  our  'kin.'  Be-swac,  past  tense  of 
be-swican,  to  deceive.  Theah  is  related  to  the  modern  Eng- 
lish '  though '  and  the  German  doch.  Swlthost,  superlative  of 
swithe,  strongly,  very.  To  him  sylfum :  note  the  ending 
-m  of  the  dative  singular.  Ge-licath,  Itcath,  are  identical 
with  the  modern  verb  '  to  like,'  the  former  having  the  prefix 
ge-,  frequently  occurring  in  Old  English  and  German  verbs. 


14  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

§  4.     Object  of  this  Book. 

The  reader  who  has  studied  the  foregoing 
pages  with  attention  will  have  obtained  a  fairly 
correct  notion  of  the  general  character  of  the 
language  spoken  by  our  ancestors  a  thousand  or 
nine  hundred  years  ago.  The  transformation  of 
the  English  of  King  Alfred  and  Abbot  .^Elfric 
into  the  widely  different  language  which  we 
speak  to-day  has,  as  we  have  already  said,  been 
the  result  of  gradual  changes.  We  do  not  pro- 
pose in  this  little  volume  to  treat  of  these  changes 
in  their  chronological  sequence — to  show,  for 
instance,  in  what  respects  the  English  of  Chaucer 
differs  from  that  of  Alfred,  the  English  of  Shaks- 
pere  from  that  of  Chaucer,  and  the  English  of 
the  nineteenth  century  from  that  of  the  sixteenth. 
Information  of  this  kind  must  be  sought  for  in 
regular  histories  of  the  English  language.  Our 
purpose  is  merely  to  give  some  idea  of  the  causes 
by  which  the  more  remarkable  changes  in  the 
language  were  brought  about,  and  to  estimate 
the  effect  which  these  changes  have  had  on  its 
fitness  as  an  instrument  for  the  expression  of 
thought. 

One  class  of  changes  in  English,  though  from 
some  points  of  view  immensely  important,  will 


I.]  INTRODUCTORY  15 

be  left  almost  entirely  out  of  the  present  discus- 
sion. We  refer  to  the  alteration  in  pronunciation, 
which  has  been  so  great,  that,  even  if  the  language 
had  in  all  other  respects  continued  the  same, 
a  speech  delivered  in  the  English  of  the  tenth 
century  would  have  been  unintelligible  to  a 
hearer  of  to-day.  Striking  as  the  changes  in 
pronunciation  are,  they  have  had  no  direct  effect 
on  the  character  of  the  language  as  a  means  of 
expression.  Our  meaning  is  neither  better  nor 
worse  conveyed  because,  for  instance,  stone,  wine, 
foot,  feet,  are  no  longer  pronounced  like  the  Old 
English  stan,  win,  fot,  fet.  Still,  there  are  some 
changes  in  pronunciation  which  have  affected  the 
expressive  capacities  of  English  indirectly,  by 
causing  other  changes,  or  by  obscuring  the  con- 
nexion of  related  words  or  forms  ;  and  these  will 
need  to  be  mentioned  in  order  to  explain  the 
results  which  they  have  ultimately  produced. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR. 

GREAT  as  are  the  differences  between  the  grammar 
of  Old  English  and  that  of  Modern  English, 
the  one  has  been  developed  gradually  out  .of  the 
other.  We  propose  now  to  inquire  into  the 
causes  to  which  this  development  has  been  due. 
The  questions  which  have  to  be  answered  are  two. 
First,  why  has  the  English  language  got  rid  of 
nearly  all  the  multitude  of  grammatical  forms 
which  it  once  possessed  ?  Secondly,  what  new 
grammatical  machinery  has  the  language  acquired 
during  the  last  thousand  years,  and  how  was  this 
new  machinery  obtained  ?  These  two  questions 
cannot  be  kept  entirely  separate,  because  each  of 
the  processes  referred  to — the  disappearance  of 
the  older  inflexions,  and  the  development  of  new 
means  of  expressing  grammatical  relations — has 
by  turns  been  the  cause  and  the  effect  of  the 


CH.  ii.]     THE   MAKING   OF  ENGLISH   GRAMMAR        17 

other.  In  some  cases  the  dying  out  of  the  ancient 
forms  created  a  need  which  had  to  be  supplied 
by  the  invention  of  new  modes  of  expression ; 
in  other  cases  the  old  inflexions  were  dropped 
because  they  had  become  superfluous,  owing  to 
the  growth  of  other  and  more  efficient  means 
of  indicating  the  functions  of  words  in  the 
sentence.  Nevertheless,  it  will  conduce  to  lucidity 
to  discuss  the  two  questions,  as  far  as  possible, 
apart  from  each  other. 


§  1.     Simplification  of  Accidence. 

The  progressive  reduction  of  the  number  of 
inflexional  forms  is  a  phenomenon  not  at  all 
peculiar  to  English.  On  the  contrary,  most  of 
the  inflected  languages  of  which  the  history  is 
known  have,  to  a  greater  or  less  extent,  under- 
gone the  same  kind  of  change.  For  example, 
although  Modern  High  German  is,  as  we  have 
shown,  much  more  complicated  in  its  accidence 
than  Modern  English,  it  is  much  less  so  than  the 
Old  High  German  of  a  thousand  years  ago  ; 
the  grammar  of  Old  High  German  is  simpler 
than  that  of  Primitive  Germanic,  which  was 
spoken  at  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era ; 
and  Primitive  Germanic  itself  had  retained  only 


i8  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

a  comparatively  small  remnant  of  the  profusion 
of  inflexional  forms  possessed  by  the  Primitive 
Indo-Germanic  tongue,  from  which  it  was  de- 
scended in  common  with  Sanskrit,  Greek,  and 
Latin.  We  may  note  in  passing  that  peasant 
German  has  lost  much  more  of  its  original 
grammar  than  has  the  German  spoken  by  edu- 
cated people.  This  fact  teaches  us  that  culture 
is  one  of  the  influences  which  retard  the  process 
of  simplification.  But  it  should  be  remembered 
that  culture  may  exist  without  books  :  there  have 
been  peoples  in  which  there  was  little  or  no 
reading  and  writing,  but  in  which  nevertheless 
the  arts  of  poetry  and  oratory  were  highly 
developed,  and  traditional  correctness  of  speech 
.was  sedulously  cultivated. 

It  is  not  wonderful  that  the  tendency  to 
simplification  of  accidence  should  be  widely 
prevalent.  Indeed,  on  a  superficial  view,  we 
might  naturally  wonder  that  this  tendency  is  not 
more  conspicuously  operative  than  is  in  fact  the 
case.  For  even  one's  mother  tongue  obviously 
must  require  to  be  learnt  ;  and  nobody  learns 
his  mother  tongue  so  perfectly  as  never  to  make 
any  grammatical  mistake.  In  a  language  with 
a  great  variety  of  conjugations  and  declensions, 
mistakes  of  grammar  mostly  consist  in  assimi- 


II.]         THE  MAKING  OF   ENGLISH   GRAMMAR  19 

lating  the  inflexion  of  the  less  common  words 
to  the  more  familiar  types.  We  might  therefore 
expect  that,  between  forgetfulness  and  the  instinct 
for  consistency,  the  rarer  conjugations  and  de- 
clensions would  always  rapidly  drop  out  of  use, 
and  that  all  inflexional  languages  would  in  a 
few  generations  approach  perceptibly  nearer  to 
the  ideal  state  in  which  the  same  grammatical 
relation  should  always  be  denoted  by  the  same 
change  in  the  form  of  a  word. 

But  in  all  matters  of  language  the  influence 
of  tradition  is  extremely  powerful.  The  mistakes 
or  intentional  innovations  in  grammar  made  by 
individuals  are  for  the  most  part  condemned  by 
the  community  at  large,  and  only  few  of  them 
come  to  affect  the  general  language.  Probably 
most  English  children  have  sometimes  said 
'  mouses '  or  '  speaked,'  but  these  regularized 
forms  do  not  appear  in  the  speech  of  even 
illiterate  adults.  So  the  tendency  to  grammatical 
simplification  in  languages  is  usually  slow  in  its 
working,  unless  it  happens  to  be  stimulated  by 
some  special  cause. 

Among  the  causes  which  hasten  the  progress 
of  languages  towards  grammatical  simplicity, 
there  are  two  that  require  particular  notice. 
There  are  (i)  phonetic  change;  and  (2)  the 


20  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

mixture  of  peoples  speaking  different  languages, 
or  different  dialects  of  the  same  language. 


PHONETIC  CHANGE. 

When  we  study  the  history  of  any  language, 
we. always  discover  that,  at  some  period  or  other, 
certain  of  its  elementary  sounds — certain  '  letters,' 
as  we  might  call  them,  of  its  spoken  alphabet — 
have  undergone  an  alteration  in  pronunciation. 
The  changes  to  which  we  here  refer  are  un- 
conscious and  unintentional,  and  are  so  very 
gradual  that  it  would  need  an  acute  and  attentive 
ear  to  discern  any  difference  between  the  sound 
of  a  word  as  uttered  by  young  men  and  by  old 
men  living  at  one  time.  But  when,  as  is  often 
the  case,  the  pronunciation  of  a  vowel  or  consonant 
becomes  in  each  successive  generation  a  little 
more  unlike  what  it  was  at  first,  the  total  amount 
of  change  may  in  time  be  very  great.  If  we 
could  compare  (by  means  of  a  phonograph  or 
otherwise)  the  present  pronunciation  of  some 
language  with  its  pronunciation  a  few  centuries 
ago,  we  might  find,  for  instance,  that  all  the 
a's  had  turned  into  o's,  or  all  the  d*s  into  /'s, 
or  vice  versa.  More  commonly,  we  should  find 
that  a  particular  vowel  or  consonant  had  changed 


ii.]         THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR          21 

into  a  certain  other  vowel  or  consonant  whenever 
it  occurred  In  the  same  part  of  a  word  (beginning, 
middle,  or  end) ;  or  whenever  it  came  in  an 
accented  syllable  ;  or  whenever  it  came  next  to 
a  certain  other  sound,  or  to  any  sound  of  a 
certain  class  ;  and  that  under  other  conditions 
it  had  either  undergone  a  different  kind  of  change, 
or  else  had  remained  unaltered. 

The  term  '  phonetic  change '  is  conventionally 
restricted  to  that  kind  of  unconscious  alteration 
of  sounds  which  has  just  been  described.  If  we 
study  any  particular  language  as  it  is  spoken 
to-day,  and  ascertain  what  sound  in  it  represents 
each  of  the  sounds  of  some  older  form  of  the 
language  under  each  of  the  varieties  of  condition 
under  which  it  occurred,  we  shall  obtain  a  body 
of  rules  which  are  called  the  phonetic  laws  of 
the  present  stage  of  the  language.  It  is  often 
said  that  the  phonetic  laws  applicable  to  one  and 
the  same  dialect  and  date  have  no  exceptions 
whatever.  Whether  this  is  absolutely  true  or 
not,  it  is  so  nearly  true  that  whenever  we  meet 
with  a  seeming  exception  we  shall  be  pretty  safe 
in  believing  that  there  has  been  at  work  some 
other  process  than  '  phonetic  change '  in  the 
sense  above  explained.  For  instance,  it  is  not  a 
case  of  phonetic  change  that  we  say  '  I  broke/ 


22  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

where  pur  ancestors  said  '  I  brake.'  What  has 
happened  is  not  that  a  has  changed  into  o,  but 
that  the  old  past  tense  has  been  superseded  by 
a  new  one,  imitated  from  the  participle  broken. 
Again,  an  apparent  exception  to  a  phonetic  law 
may  be  due  to  the  fact  that  one  dialect  has 
borrowed  a  form  from  another  dialect  in  which 
the  course  of  phonetic  change  had  been  different. 

Why  a  particular  phonetic  change  should  take 
place  in  one  language,  dialect,  or  period  and  not 
in  another  is  a  question  on  which  we  cannot 
here  enter.  For  our  present  purpose,  it  is  enough 
to  note  the  fact  that  the  same  original  sound  may 
develop  quite  differently  in  two  dialects  of  the 
same  language,  and  that  a  sound  may  continue 
fbr  many  centuries  unaltered,  and  then  enter  on 
a  course  of  rapid  change. 

The  results  of  phonetic  change,  so  far  as  they 
affect  the  history  of  grammar,  are  of  three  kinds  : 

1.  Confluent  development.    Sometimes  two  origi- 
nally different  sounds  come  to   be   represented   in 
a  later  stage  of  the  language  by  a  single  sound. 

Thus  the  Old  English  a  and  d  (in  certain  positions)  have 
yielded  the  Modern  English  d,  so  that  hal  (whole)  and/07# 
(foal)  now  form  a  perfect  rime. 

2.  Divergent  development.      One  and   the  same 
original  sound   may,  owing  to    difference  of  con- 


ii.]         THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH   GRAMMAR          23 

ditions,  yield  two  or  more  distinct  sounds  in  the 
later  language. 

Thus  in  Old  English  ic  Zxde,  I  lead,  and  ic  Ixdde,  I  led, 
had  the  same  vowel  ;  but  because  in  one  word  the  vowel 
was  followed  by  a  single  and  in  the  other  by  a  double  d, 
their  modern  forms  have  different  vowels. 

3.  Dropping  of  sounds.  In  some  cases  the 
phonetic  law  relating  to  a  particular  vowel  or 
consonant  is  that,  when  it  occurs  under  certain 
conditions,  it  will  neither  remain  unchanged  nor 
change  into  anything  else,  but  will  vanish 
altoether. 


Thus,  an  Old  French  /,  if  it  comes  at  the  end  of  a  word, 
becomes  silent  in  Modern  French.  Again,  every  short 
vowel  which  ended  a  word  (of  more  than  one  syllable)  in 
Old  English  has  long  ago  dropped  off,  so  that  all  the 
words  which  a  thousand  years  ago  were  disyllables  with 
short  vowel  endings  are  now  monosyllables. 

Now  supposing  that  in  any  language  the 
sounds  which  happen  to  be  subject  to  these  three 
kinds  of  phonetic  change  are  those  which  are 
used  in  the  inflexional  endings,  it  is  obvious  that 
the  result  must  be  a  considerable  upsetting  of 
the  grammatical  system.  The  effect,  however,  is 
not  immediately  to  produce  simplification.  On 
the  contrary,  the  tendency  of  '  divergent  develop- 
ment '  is  to  increase  the  number  of  declensions 
and  conjugations,  because  the  same  original 


24  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

termination  becomes  different  in  different  words. 
The  effect  of  '  confluent  development '  and  '  drop- 
ping of  sounds '  is  to  make  the  inflexional 
system  less  efficient  for  its  purpose  by  confound- 
ing different  cases,  persons,  tenses,  etc.,  under 
the  same  form.  It  is  owing  to  changes  of  this 
sort  jn  prehistoric  times  that  the  Latin  language 
has  the  awkward  defect  of  having  only  one 
form  (Musae)  for  the  genitive  and  dative  singular 
and  the  nominative  and  vocative  plural  of  cer- 
tain nouns.  The  same  cause,  also,  accounts  for 
the  inconvenient  peculiarity  of  Old  English  gram- 
mar, in  having  a  large  number  of  nouns  with 
their  nominative  singular  and  nominative  plural 
alike.  This  example  is  instructive,  because  it 
shows  the  fallacy  of  the  notion  sometimes  main- 
tained, that  phonetic  change  does  not  destroy 
inflexions  till  they  have  already  become  useless. 
In  what  may  be  called'  prehistoric  continental 
English,  the  plural  ending  of  many  neuter  nouns 
was  H.  There  came  a  time  when  it  became  a 
phonetic  law  that  a  final  $  always  dropped  off 
when  it  followed  a  heavy  syllable,  but  remained 
after  a  light  syllable.  Hence  in  Old  English  as 
we  know  it  the  plural  of  sdp  (ship)  was  scipu, 
but  the  plural  of  hus  (house)  was  hits,  just  like 
the  singular.  In  this  instance  phonetic  change 


ii.]         THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR          25 

produced  two  different  effects :  it  made  two 
declensions  out  of  one,  and  it  deprived  a  great 
many  words  of  a  useful  inflexional  distinction. 

We  thus  see  that  the  direct  result  of  phonetic 
change  on  the  grammar  of  a  language  is  chiefly 1 
for  evil :  it  makes  it  more  complicated  and  less 
lucid.  But  when  these  inconveniences  become 
too  great  to  be  endured,  they  provoke  a  re- 
action. The  speakers  of  the  language  find  out 
how  to  express  needful  grammatical  distinctions 
by  other  than  inflexional  means ;  or  else  they 
generalize  the  use  of  those  inflexional  forms  that 
have  happened  to  escape  decay,  applying  them 
to  other  words  than  those  to  which  they  origi- 
nally belonged.  In  this  way  phonetic  change 
leads  indirectly  to  that  kind  of  simplification 
which  we  shall  find  exemplified  in  the  history 
of  the  English  language. 

MIXTURE  OF  PEOPLES. 

The  second  condition  which  we  mentioned  as 
favouring  grammatical  simplification  was  the 
mixture  of  peoples  speaking  different  languages 
or  dialects. 

1  Not  exclusively  so  ;  for  it  may  hasten  the  disappearance  of  in- 
convenient forms  which  traditional  inertia  might  otherwise  have 
retained  after  better  modes  of  expression  had  come  into  existence. 


26  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

Let  it  be   imagined    that   an    island   inhabited 
by  people   speaking  a  highly   inflected    language 
receives    a    large   accession    of   foreigners    to    its 
population.     To     make    the    case    as    simple    as 
possible,  let.  it  be  further  imagined  that  there  is 
no    subsequent     communication     with     the     out- 
sio^e  world,  and  that  nobody  on    the  island   can 
read  or  write.     What  may  be  expected  to  happen? 
It   is  a  matter    of   general    experience   that    a 
person    who    tries    to    learn    a    foreign    language 
entirely    by    conversation    finds    the     vocabulary 
easier  to  acquire  than  the  grammar.      And   it  is 
wonderful  how  well,  for  the  common  purposes  of 
intercourse,   one   can   often   get   on    in  a    foreign 
country  by  using  the  bare  stems  of  words,  with- 
out any  grammar  at  all.      Many  Englishmen    of 
•  the    uneducated    class    have    lived    for    years    in 
Germany,  and  managed  to  make  themselves  fairly 
well  understood,  without  ever  troubling  themselves 
with  the  terminations  of  adjectives  or  articles,  or 
the  different  ways  of  forming  the  plural  in  nouns. 
In   our  imaginary  island  the  foreigners  will  soon 
pick  up  a  stock  of  words ;  if  the  island   language 
is    like   the   Germanic    ones,    in    which   the   main 
stress  is  never  on   the  inflexional   syllables,  their 
task    will     be     much     easier.      The    grammatical 
endings  will  be  learnt  more  slowly,  and  only  the 


ii.]         THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH   GRAMMAR  27 

most  striking  will  be  learnt  at  all.  The  natives 
will  soon  manage  to  understand  .the  broken 
jargon  of  the  new  comers,  and  to  adopt  it  in 
conversation  with  them,  avoiding  the  use  of  those 
inflexions  which  they  discover  to  be  puzzling  to 
their  hearers.  But  if  they  acquire  the  habit  of 
using  a  simplified  grammar  in  their  dealings  with 
foreigners,  they  will  not  entirely  escape  using  it 
in  their  intercourse  with  each  other.  If  there  is 
intermarriage  and  absorption  of  the  strangers  in 
the  native  population,  the  language  of  the  island 
must  in  a  few  generations  be  deprived  of  a  con- 
siderable number  of  its  inflexional  forms. 

Let  us  now  consider  a  somewhat  different  case. 
Suppose  that  the  two  peoples  that  live  together 
and  blend  into  one,  instead  of  speaking  widely 
distinct  languages,  speak  dialects  not  too  far  apart 
to  allow  of  a  good  deal  of  mutual  understanding 
from  the  first,  or  at  any  rate  as  soon  as  the  ear 
has  been  accustomed  to  the  constant  differences 
of  pronunciation.  The  two  dialects,  let  us  suppose, 
have  a  large  common  vocabulary,  with  marked 
differences  in  inflexion — a  very  frequent  case, 
because  phonetic  change  is  apt  to  cause  greater 
divergences  in  the  unstressed  endings  than  iri  the 
stressed  stems  of  words.  The  result  will  be  much 
the  same  as  when  peoples  speaking  distinct 


28  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

languages  are  mingled  ;  indeed  there  are  reasons 
for  thinking  that  the  change  will  be  even  more 
rapid  and  decisive.  For  one  thing,  the  blending 
of  the  two  peoples  is  likely  to  take  place  more 
quickly.  Then,  as  the  speakers  of  neither  dialect 
will  be  disposed  to  take  the  other  as  their  model 
of  correct  speech,  two  different  sets  of  inflexional 
forms  will  for  a  time  be  current  in  the  same 
district,  and  there  will  arise  a  hesitation  and 
uncertainty  about  the  grammatical  endings  that 
will  tend  to  render  them  indistinct  in  pronuncia- 
tion, and  hence  not  worth  preserving. 

We  see,  therefore,  that  the  simplification  of  the 
inflexional  machinery  of  a  language  is  powerfully 
stimulated  by  the  absorption  of  large  bodies  of 
foreigners  into  the  population  and  by  the  mixture 
of  different  dialects.  It  has  now  to  be  shown 
how  far  these  causes  were  actually  in  operation 
during  the  formative  period  of  the  English 
language. 

The  Angles,  Saxons,  and  Jutes,  who  settled  in 
Britain  in  the  fifth  and  sixth  centuries,  though 
speaking  substantially  the  same  language,  brought 
with  them  their  peculiarities  of  dialect.  They 
established  themselves  independently  in  different 
parts  of  the  country  ;  and,  in  consequence  of  local 
separation,  their  original  divergences  of  speech 


II.]         THE   MAKING  OF   ENGLISH   GRAMMAR  29 

gradually  became  wider,  so  that  in  three  or  four 
centuries  the  kinds  of  English  spoken  in  Wessex, 
Mercia,  Kent,  and  Northumbria,  had  become 
markedly  different ;  and  each  of  these  dialectal 
areas  doubtless  included  several  minor  varieties  of 
local  speech.  In  the  main,  the  Old  English  dialects 
seem  to  have  differed  but  little  in  their  vocabu- 
lary, and  the  diversity  of  pronunciation,  though 
considerable,  was  not  sufficient  often  to  disguise 
the  identity  of  the  words.  Except  for  the 
grammatical  differences,  a  Kentishman  and  a 
Northumbrian  of  the  eighth  century  would  pro- 
bably find  it  easier  to  understand  each  other's 
speech  than  their  rustic  descendants  do  at  the 
present  day.  The  increase  of  population,  and 
the  establishment  of  political  unity  over  larger 
and  larger  areas  during  the  succeeding  centuries, 
necessarily  resulted  in  the  formation  of  mixed 
dialects,  and  this  contributed  to  the  decay  of  the 
inflexional  system  of  the  language. 

A  further  impulse  in  the  same  direction  was 
given  by  the  conquests  and  settlements  of  the 
Danes  and  Northmen,  which  fill  so  large  a  space 
in  the  annals  of  England  from  the  ninth  to  the 
eleventh  century.  The  vast  importance  of  those 
events  is  perhaps  not  adequately  appreciated 
by  ordinary  readers  of  history.  What  we  are 


3o  THE   MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

accustomed  to  regard  as  the  history  of  England 
during  these  centuries  is  really  little  more  than 
the  history  of  English  England  ;  the  larger  portion 
of  England  which  was  under  Scandinavian  rule 
had  no  chroniclers.  Of  the  Danish  dynasty 
which  reigned  at  York  we  know  hardly  more 
than  the  names  of  the  kings  ;  and  the  history  of 
Danish  East  Anglia  and  Mercia  is  even  more 
obscure.  It  is  only  by  the  indirect  evidence  of 
place-names  and  modern  dialects  that  we  learn 
that  in  some  districts  of  England  the  population 
must  at  one  time  have  been  far  more  largely 
Scandinavian  than  English,  and  that  important 
Scandinavian  settlements  existed  in  almost  every 
county  north  of  the  Thames.  In  the  year  1017 
Cnut  of  Denmark  conquered  the  throne  of  Eng- 
land, and  his  strong  rule  gave  to  the  country 
a  degree  of  political  unity  such  as  it  had  never 
had  before.  Under  the  succeeding  kings,  even 
under  the  Englishman  Edward  the  Confessor,  the 
highest  official  posts  in  the  kingdom  continued  to 
be  held  by  men  of  Danish  origin.  The  result  of 
these  new  conditions  was  the  extension  of  Scandi- 
navian influence  to  those  parts  of  the  country 
which  had  previously  been  most  purely  English. 
The  language  spoken  by  the  Danes  and  North- 
men was  an  older  form  of  that  in  which  the 


II.]         THE   MAKING  OF  ENGLISH   GRAMMAR  31 

Icelandic  sagas  were  written.  It  was  so  nearly 
like  Old  English  that  a  Scandinavian  settler  in 
England  would  very  soon  learn  to  understand  the 
speech  of  his  neighbours,  so  far  as  the  mere  word- 
stems  were  concerned.  After  a  little  experience 
of  English  habits  of  pronunciation,  he  would  be 
able  to  recognise  most  of  the  words  as  identical 
with  those  of  his  native  tongue.  The  grammati- 
cal inflexions,  however,  would  be  more  puzzling, 
many  of  them  being  quite  dissimilar  in  the  two 
languages.  Under  such  conditions  there  must 
have  arisen  mixed  dialects,  mainly  English,  but 
containing  many  Danish  words,  and  characterized 
by  the  dropping  or  confused  use  of  some  of  the 
terminations  distinctive  of  cases,  genders,  and 
persons.  We  possess,  in  fact,  one  short  speci- 
men of  Old  English  as  it  was  written  by  a  Dane. 
This  is  an  inscription  found  at  Aldborough  in 
Yorkshire,  which  has  been  read  as  follows  :  Ulf 
let  arluran  cyrice  for  hanum  and  for  Gunware 
sdula,  i.e.  '  Ulf  caused  a  church  to  be  built  for 
himself  and  for  the  soul  of  Gunwaru.'  Probably 
the  sentence  is  more  correct  Old  English  than 
Ulf  habitually  spoke ;  but  he  has  made  the 
mistake  of  putting  the  Danish  pronoun  hanum 
instead  of  the  English  him.  It  is  a  pity  that  we 
have  no  more  actual  examples  to  show  what 


32  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

Danish-English  was  like  in  the  eleventh  century. 
But  since  we  know  for  a  fact  that  those  districts 
in  which  the  Danes  had  settled  are  precisely  those 
in  which  English  grammar  became  simplified 
most  rapidly,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
Scandinavian  admixture  in  the  population  was 
on^of  the  causes  that  contributed  to  bring  about 
the  disuse  of  the  Old  English  inflexions. 

After  the  Scandinavian  settlements,  the  next 
great  event  that  affected  the  development  of  the 
English  language  was  the  Norman  Conquest.  It 
is  not  likely  that  the  great  political  change  of 
A.D.  1066  had  any  marked  immediate  effect  on 
the  actual  speech  of  the  people.  It  is,  however, 
certain  that  the  grammar  of  the  literary  language 
began  to  show  very  striking  changes  early  in  the 
twelfth  century.  The  ending  -an  of  the  southern 
dialect  came  to  be  written  -en,  and  all  the 
inflexional  endings  consisting  in  vowels  were 
reduced  to  a  uniform  -e.  The  explanation  is,  no 
doubt,  that  the  indistinctness  in  the  pronunciation 
of  the  endings,  which  had  gradually  invaded  the 
popular  language,  now  manifested  itself  in  writing. 
When  the  monasteries,  the  homes  of  the  literary 
class,  were  filled  with  foreign  monks,  the  superiors 
in  education  of  their  native  brethren,  the  ver- 
nacular culture  could  not  but  surfer.  The  tradi- 


ii.]         THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR          33 

tional  orthography  ceased  to  be  maintained,  and 
there  was  less  and  less  solicitude  for  traditional 
correctness  of  expression  on  the  part  of  the 
writers.  Hence,  in  all  probability,  the  alteration 
in  the  language  between  1066  and  1 150  appears 
from  the  literary  remains  more  rapid  than  it 
actually  was.1 

While,  however,  the  apparent  immediate  effect 
of  the  Conquest  on  the  English  language  is  partly 
an  illusion,  there  is  no  doubt  that  that  event  did 
introduce  a  new  influence  which  operated  with 
great,  and  for  two  centuries  constantly  increasing, 
effect.  Under  the  Norman  and  Angevin  kings 
there  was  a  great  influx  of  Frenchmen  into  the 
country.  The  language  of  the  court  and  the 
nobility  was  French  ;  amongst  the  middle  classes 
every  one  who  aspired  to  social  consideration 
endeavoured  to  become  fluent  in  the  fashionable 
language.  In  the  grammar-schools  boys  were, 
even  down  to  the  fourteenth  century,  taught  their 
Latin  through  the  medium  of  French.  The 
writing  and  reading  of  English,  apparently,  almost 

1  The  probability  of  this  view  is  confirmed  by  a  study  of  Domes- 
day Book.  This  record,  compiled  in  1086,  contains  thousands  of 
English  names  of  persons  and  places,  written  phonetically  by 
Norman  scribes.  The  forms  exhibit  the  changes  above  referred  to 
with  a  uniformity  that  does  not  appear  in  the  spelling  of  native 
writers  until  about  a  century  later. 

C 


34  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

entirely  ceased  to  be  a  part  of  regular  school 
teaching,  for  many  of  the  extant  early  Middle 
English  manuscripts  were  written  by  persons  who 
evidently  had  never  learnt  to  spell  their  native 
language,  but  rendered  the  words  phonetically 
according  to  the  French  values  of  the  letters.  In 
the-  thirteenth  century  it  would  seem  that  a  very 
considerable  portion  of  the  population  of  England 
must  have  been  bilingual.  How  far-reaching  the 
effect  of  the  foreign  influence  was  at  this  period 
may  be  seen  from  the  large  number  of  Old 
French  words  that  have  found  their  way  into  our 
rustic  dialects. 

From  what  has  already  been  said,  it  will  be 
evident  that  the  natural  tendency  of  this  con- 
dition of  things  would  be  to  promote  the  disuse 
of  the  traditional  inflexional  system  of  English. 
It  is  impossible  to  determine  to  what  extent  the 
actual  change  which  took  place  in  this  direction 
is  to  be  ascribed  to  the  use  of  a  foreign  language 
by  the  side  of  the  vernacular,  because  we  have  no 
means  of  measuring  the  efficiency  of  the  other 
powerful  causes  which  were  working  to  the  same 
result.  But  that  the  change,  at  least  in  the 
southern  part  of  the  kingdom,  was  materially 
accelerated  by  this  agency  there  seems  to  be  no 
reasonable  doubt. 


ii.]         THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR          35 

It  is  now  time  to  turn  from  generalities  to  the 
consideration  of  some  specific  instances  of  the 
simplification  which  has  taken  place  in  English 
accidence.  We  will  begin  with  the  declension  of 
substantives. 

Old  English  had  many  declensions  of  sub- 
stantives— how  many  we  can  hardly  say,  because 
it  is  not  the  custom  to  denote  them  by  num- 
bers as  is  done  in  Latin  and  Greek  grammar, 
and  scholars  might  find  it  difficult  to  decide  what 
amount  of  variation  should  be  regarded  as  con- 
stituting a  separate  '  declension.'  However,  there 
was  one  declension  which  formed  its  genitive 
singular  in  -es  and  its  nominative  (and  accusative) 
plural  in  -as ;  and  there  were  other  declensions 
in  which  -ay  -an,  -e  appear  as  endings  for  the 
genitive  singular,  and  -a,  -an,  -e,  -u  for  the 
nominative  plural  ;  and  yet  others  in  which  the 
genitive  singular  or  the  nominative  plural,  or  both, 
were  like  the  nominative  singular,  or  different  from 
it  in  only  the  vowel  of  the  root  syllable.  Out 
of  all  these  the  -es  and  -as  declension  is  the  only 
one  that  remains  in  general  use.  Except  for  a 
few  irregular  plurals,  all  modern  English  sub- 
stantives are  declined  with  the  endings  (written 
-s  and  -es  or  -s]  which  descend  from  the  Old 
English  -es  and  -as. 


36  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

Now  this  is  obviously  an  instance  of  the 
famous  principle  of  '  survival  of  the  fittest.'  For 
amongst  the  Old  English  case-endings  -es  was  the 
only  one  that  never  meant  anything  else  than  a 
genitive  singular,  and  -as  was  the  only  one 
that  never  meant  anything  else  than  a 
nominative  or  accusative  plural.  Thus,  Jianan 
stood  for  the  genitive,  dative,  and  accusative 
singular  and  the  nominative  and  accusative  plural 
of  hana,  a  cock  ;  gife  might  be  either  genitive, 
dative,  or  accusative  singular,  and  gifa  either 
nominative,  accusative,  or  genitive  plural,  of 
gifu  a  gift ;  and  so  forth. 

It  is  a  popular  error  to  suppose  that  it  was 
in  consequence  of  the  Norman  Conquest  that 
tfre  -es  and  -as  declension  came  to  supersede 
all  the  rest.  In  fact  the  change  began  much 
earlier ;  and  it  began  in  the  northern  dialect. 
For  this  there  were  special  reasons. 

We  have  just  seen  that  the  noun-declension 
of  southern  Old  English  (from  which  our  ex- 
amples were  taken)  was  full  of  ambiguities  ;  the 
reason  being  that  the  inherited  Germanic  case- 
endings,  originally  distinct,  had  undergone 
phonetic  change  to  such  an  extent  that  many  of 
them  had  come  to  coincide  in  form.  In  the 
northern  dialect  the  state  of  things  was  still 


ii.]         THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR          37 

worse,  because  in  that  dialect  the  termination  -an 
regularly  dropped  its  nasal  ;  and  further,  the 
mixture  of  different  local  varieties  of  speech  had 
led  to  a  general  indistinctness  and  uncertainty 
in  the  pronunciation  of  those  vowels  which  served 
as  case-endings,  so  that  in  some  words  the 
terminations  -a,  -«,  -e,  -ot  and  -u  seem  to  be  used 
indiscriminately  in  the  same  text.  As  an  instance 
of  the  greater  imperfection  of  the  noun-declension 
in  Northumbrian  as  compared  with  southern  Old 
English,  we  may  refer  to  the  word  '  eye.'  In  the 
southern  dialect  the  nominative  and  accusative 
singular  were  eage,  the  genitive  and  dative 
singular  and  the  nominative  and  accusative  plural 
were  eagan.  But  in  the  northern  dialect  ego  is 
found  for  all  these  cases. 

In  the  Durham  Gospels,  written  about  the 
middle  of  the  tenth  century,  we  may  see  how 
this  state  of  confusion  had  already  begun  to  be 
remedied.  The  old  declensions  still  survived  ; 
but  when  there  was  need  for  greater  distinctness 
of  expression  than  the  old  forms  afforded,  the 
endings  -es  for  the  genitive  and  -as  for  the  plural 
nominative  were  substituted  for  those  of  other 
declensions.  Accordingly,  many  of  the  substan- 
tives which  in  West  Saxon  (i.e.  southern  Old 
English)  belong  to  other  declensions  have  in  the 


38  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

Durham  Book  occasionally,  though  not  exclusively, 
the  -es  and  -as  forms.  On  the  opposite  page 
is  a  table  showing  a  few  comparative  specimens 
of  the  inflexion  in  the  two  dialects,  the  new  forms 
being  indicated  by  italics. 

It  is  true  that  in  the  Northumbrian  dialect  of 
the-  tenth  century  the  substitution  of  -es  and  -as 
for  the  other  equivalent  terminations  had  merely 
begun.  But  a  change  which  constituted  so 
great  an  improvement  in  distinctness  of  expression 
could  not  fail  to  go  on.  Before  three  centuries 
had  passed,  it  had  extended  itself  to  nearly  all 
substantives.  The  increased  intercourse  between 
the  different  parts  of  the  country,  which  was  the 
result  of  the  political  unification  of  England,  led 
tor  the  introduction  of  these  northern  forms,  re- 
commended by  their  superior  clearness,  into  the 
grammar  of  the  midland  dialects,  from  which  our 
modern  literary  English  is  descended.  To  some 
extent,  however,  the  advantage  which  the  language 
had  gained  by  the  reduction  of  its  many  de- 
clensions to  one  was  lost  by  the  effect  of  phonetic 
change.  The  tendency  to  increase  the  propor- 
tionate stress  on  the  body  of  the  word,  and 
consequently  to  obscure  the  pronunciation  of  the 
endings,  caused  the  original  -es  and  -as  to  be 
pronounced  alike.  Hence  in  Middle  English 


ii.]         THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH   GRAMMAR 


39 


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40  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

kinges,   for  example,  stood   for  both  the  genitive 
singular  and  the  nominative  plural  of  king. 

In  southern  Old  English,  the  system  of  noun- 
inflexion,  though  somewhat  better  than  that  of 
the  northern  dialect,  was  still,  as  we  have  seen,  so 
imperfect  that  most  of  its  forms  were  inadequate 
to  indicate  with  certainty  the  case  and  number  of 
a  word.  '  It  became  still  more  defective  when — as 
happened  in  the  twelfth  century — all  the  vowels 
of  the  inflexional  endings  came  to  be  represented 
by  one  indistinct  sound,  represented  by  the  letter 
e,  and  when,  moreover,  many  monosyllabic  nomina- 
tives became  disyllabic  by  the  addition  of  a  final 
-e  due  to  assimilation  to  other  cases.  The  defects 
•of  the  system  were  obviated  to  some  extent  by 
applying  the  suffix  -en,  which  was  inherited  in 
words  like  sterren  from  sterre  star,  to  form  the 
genitive  and  the  plural  of  words  in  which  the 
regular  case-endings  were  ambiguous.  There  was, 
in  fact,  a  definite  movement  in  early  southern 
Middle  English  towards  making  -en  the  regular 
plural  ending  of  nouns.  We  find  in  the 
thirteenth  century  such  forms  as  trewen,  trees 
(where  Old  English  had  treowti),  schoon,  shoes 
(Old  English  sceos\  lauibren,  lambs,  calveren, 
calves,  cyren,  eggs  (Old  English  lambru,  cealfru, 
%gru}.  This  tendency  was  arrested  in  the  four- 


n.]         THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR          41 

teenth  century  by  the  spread  of  the  -es  forms 
from  the  midland  dialects.  But  the  rustic  speech 
of  the  south-western  counties  has  still  a  few 
plurals  like  housen  (Old  English  hus]  ;  and  modern 
standard  English  says  children  (Old  English 
cildru,  did,  modern  northern  and  north  midland 
dialects  childer\  and  in  more  or  less  old-fashioned 
diction  also  brethren  (Old  English  brother,  brothru, 
Old  Norse  brwthr)  and  kine  (Old  English  cy, 
modern  Scotch  and  northern  dialects  kye}.  It  is 
somewhat  curious  that  although,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  original  -n  as  a  plural  ending  had  already 
been  lost  in  the  Northumbrian  dialect  of  the  tenth 
century,  the  modern  Scotch  plurals  of  ox  and  eye 
are  ousen  and  een  ;  and  it  is  still  more  curious 
that  in  Scotch  and  in  most  provincial  dialects  the 
plural  of  shoe  is  shoon,  though  in  all  varieties  of 
Old  English  it  was  seeds.  The  anomaly,  however, 
like  other  anomalies  in  language,  is  capable  of 
explanation.  The  genitive  plural  of  oxa  in  Old 
Northumbrian  was  oxna,  and  that  of  ego  (eye)  was 
egna.  The  need  for  making  a  formal  difference 
between  singular  and  plural  in  these  words  was 
supplied  by  transferring  the  n  from  the  genitive 
to  the  nominative  plural.  As  for  the  word  shoe,  it 
ended  in  a  vowel ;  and  as  most  other  monosyllabic 
nouns  with  vowel  endings  made  the  genitive 


42  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

plural  in  -na,  this  word  was    assimilated  in    de- 
clension to  the  words  which  it  resembled  in  form. 

It  may  at  first  sight  appear  strange,  seeing 
that  the  Middle  English  -es  has  come  so  near  to 
being  the  universal  plural  ending,  that  the  pro- 
cess has  not  been  carried  out  to  its  limit,  and 
that  we  have  still  our  half-score  of  '  irregular 
pfurals.'  But  the  desire  for  uniformity  has  had 
a  very  small  share  in  the  evolution  of  English 
grammar.  The  changes  that  have  taken  place, 
where  they  are  not  due  to  the  operation  of 
phonetic  law,  have  mostly  been  produced  either 
by  the  attempt  to  avoid  ambiguity,  or  by  the 
disposition  to  save  time  or  trouble  in  speaking. 
Now  the  plurals  men,  teeth,  geese,  mice,  lice,  oxen, 
are  unambiguous  in  form  ;  if  we  were  to  sub- 
stitute the  '  regular '  forms,  they  would  to  the 
ear  be  identical  with  the  genitives,  man's,  tooth's, 
goose's,  and  so  on.  Moreover,  the  irregular 
plurals  are  all  either  shorter  or  easier  to  pro- 
nounce than  the  regular  forms  would  be.  There 
were  thus  two  good  reasons  for  not  assimilating 
the  declension  of  these  words  to  the  prevailing 
type.  It  is  true  that  a  few  of  the  plurals 
anciently  formed  by  vowel-change  have  not 
survived :  for  instance,  where  Old  English  had 
bdC)  bee,  we  now  say  book,  books.  But  if  bcc 


ii.]         THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR          43 

had  come  down  into  modern  English,  it  would 
by  phonetic  law  have  become  beech?-  which 
would  have  had  the  double  disadvantage  of  not 
showing  its  relationship  to  the  singular,  and  of 
coinciding  in  form  with  a  quite  different  word. 

There  remain  to  be  noticed  two  or  three 
points  in  the  history  of  the  simplification  in  the 
declension  of  substantives.  For  the  genitive 
plural  the  Old  English  endings  were,  according 
to  the  declension,  -a  and  -ena.  The  latter,  as 
the  more  distinct  and  unambiguous,  had  already 
in  Old  English  begun  to  encroach  on  the  territory 
of  the  former ;  and  in  early  Middle  English  this 
movement  was  continued,  -ene  (two  syllables) 
being  in  monosyllabic  nouns  generally  preferred 
to  -e.  Thus  we  have  kingene  king  for  '  king  of 
kings.'  With  longer  words  this  ending  was  too 
unwieldy,  and  speakers  seem  early  to  have  fallen 
into  the  habit  of  using  the  plural  nominative 
form  (at  first  in  disyllabic  nouns,  afterwards  in 
others)  as  a  genitive.  Thus  the  one  form  king-es, 
which  already  had  three  functions,  expressing  the 
genitive  singular  and  the  nominative  and  accus- 
ative plural,  came  to  stand  for  the  genitive 
plural  as  well.  Ambiguity  was  for  a  time 

1  Because  the  same  cause  that  turned  5  into  e  had  also  altered 
the  pronunciation  of  the  c. 


44  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  .    [CHAP. 

prevented  by  the  inflexion  of  the  accompanying 
article  or  adjective.  But  in  the  end  these  parts 
of  speech  lost  their  case-endings,  and  the  result 
was  that  a  form  like  horses  had  nothing  to  show 
whether  it  stood  for  a  genitive  singular  or  a 
nominative,  accusative,  or  genitive  plural.  This 
remains  as  a  real  defect  in  modern  spoken  Eng- 
lish, though  in  writing  we  obviate  it  by  a  device 
of  recent  origin,  using  horses  for  the  nominative 
(and  accusative)  plural,  horse's  for  the  genitive 
singular,  and  horses'  for  the  genitive  plural. 
This  weakness  in  our  system  of  inflexions  would 
have  been  seriously  inconvenient,  if  it  had  not 
been  for  the  introduction  of  the  practice  of  using 
the  preposition  of  instead  of  the  genitive  in- 
flexion— an  innovation  respecting  which  we  shall 
afterwards  have  to  speak. 

Besides  the  genitive,  Old  English  had  two 
other  inflected  cases,  the  accusative  and  the 
dative.  But  phonetic  change  had  already  made 
such  havoc  with  the  original  Germanic  endings 
that  even  in  southern  Old  English  the 
accusative  and  nominative  were  always  alike 
in  the  plural,  and  very  frequently,  perhaps 
most  frequently,  in  the  singular  also.  In  the 
northern  dialect  the  formal  difference  between 
the  cases,  in  substantives,  had  almost  dis- 


ii.]         THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR          45 

appeared.  When  a  case-distinction  has  become 
a  mere  occasional  irregularity,  the  speakers  of 
the  language  have  learnt  to  do  without  it,  and 
have  no  motive  for  resisting  the  influences  that 
tend  to  abolish  it.  The  fact  that  the  articles 
and  adjectives  were  inflected  rendered  the  accus- 
ative ending  of  substantives  less  necessary ;  and 
with  the  growing  habit  of  placing  the  parts  of 
a  sentence  in  one  uniform  order,  the  subject  and 
object  could  be  quite  well  distinguished  without 
the  aid  of  inflexions.  Hence  the  accusative,  as 
an  inflected  case  of  substantives,  disappeared 
early  in  Middle  English.  The  dative  lasted 
longer ;  in  fact  we  have  some  faint  traces  of  it 
still.  In  Old  English  the  dative  singular  ended 
in  -e  or  (rarely)  in  -a,  and  in  one  large  class  of 
words  in  -an  ;  in  Middle  English  these  endings 
became  -e  and  -en.  The  ending  of  the  dative 
plural  was  -um,  but  this  was  weakened  in  late 
Old  English  into  -on  and  -an,  becoming  -en  in 
Middle  English.1  As  the  case  of  the  indirect 
object  the  dative  did  not  survive  long  in  Middle 
English,  but  when  governed  by  prepositions  it  re- 
tained its  endings  down  to  the  fourteenth  century. 
In  the  latter  part  of  that  century — for  instance, 

1  The  same  change  has  occuried  in  German,  where  -en  or  -n  is 
now  the  universal  ending  of  the  dative  plural 


46  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

in  the  writings  of  Chaucer — the  dative  endings 
rarely  appear  except  in  phrases  that  had  become 
adverbs,  such  as  on  live,  which  has  in  modern 
English  been  shortened  to  '  alive.'  The  reason 
why  alive  has  a  v,  while  life  has  an  ft  is  that 
the  Old  English  f  between  vowels  was  pro- 
nounced v.  Hence,  while  the  Old  English  nomi- 
native llf  is  represented  in  modern  English  by 
'  life,'  its  dative  life  is  represented  by  the  last 
syllable  of  '  alive.'  There  is  one  dative  plural 
surviving  in  modern  English,  the  adverb  whilom. 
Here  the  Old  English  form  -um  still  remains, 
not  even  having  undergone  the  Middle  English 
alteration  to  -en  ;  an  instance  of  the  important 
fact  that  some  peculiarity  in  the  meaning  of  a 
word  will  occasionally  cause  it  to  be  exempted 
from  the  normal  effect  of  phonetic  change. 

The  case-inflexion  of  pronouns  is  more  per- 
manent than  that  of  nouns.  As  any  personal 
pronoun  is  far  more  frequent  in  use  than  any 
individual  noun,  the  use  of  the  case-distinction  in 
pronouns  is  more  a  matter  of  fixed  habit.  But 
already  in  Old  English  the  dative  and  accusative 
had  become  alike  for  the  pronouns  of  the  first  and 
second  persons  in  both  numbers  ;  and  in  Middle 
English  these  two  cases  became  confused  together 
also  in  the  third  person.  A  fact  not  very  easy  to 


n.]          THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH   GRAMMAR  47 

account  for  is  that  it  was  the  dative  and  not  the 
accusative  form  that  finally  prevailed.1  Our 
modern  '  objectives,'  him,  her,  'em,  represent  the 
Old  English  datives  him,  hire,  heom.  The  Old 
English  masculine  accusative  hine  survives  only 
in  the  'un  ('  I  see  'un ')  of  the  south-western 
dialects. 

We  now  come  to  what  is  the  most  remarkable, 
and  one  of  the  most  beneficial,  of  all  the  changes 
which  the  English  language  has  undergone — the 
substitution  of  '  natural '  for  '  grammatical '  gender. 
It  is  not  easy  for  us  English  people  to  under- 
stand what  a  wonderful  change  this  really  was. 
We  are  apt  to  look  on  it  as  the  most  natural 
thing  in  the  world  that  '  gender '  should  corre- 
spond to  sex  :  that  masculine  and  feminine  nouns 
should  be  those  denoting  males  and  females 
respectively,  and  that  neuter  nouns  should  be 
those  which  denote  objects  which  are  not  re- 
garded as  possessing  sex.2  And  yet  this  state 

1  The   explanation  may  perhaps  be  that  pronouns  referring  to 
persons  occurred  more  frequently  in  the  case  of  the  indirect  object 
than  in  that  of  the  direct  object.     The  '  objective  '  case  of  the  neuter 
it  (Old  English  hit)  is  it,  from  the  accusative,  not  him  from  the 
dative. 

2  In  absolute  strictness,  we  ought  to  say  that  in  modern  English 
the  masculine  and  feminine  genders  are  restricted  to  nouns  denoting 
persons,  or  things  in  which  we  see  some  analogy  to  personality, 
while    the   neuter   gender  applies   to   designations  of    things  not 


48  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

of  things  cannot  be  so  very  natural  ;  for  the  fact 
is  that  English  is  the  only  language,  among 
those  that  are  at  all  generally  known,  in  which 
it  exists.  In  Sanskrit,  Greek,  Latin  (and  its 
descendants,  French,  Italian,  Spanish,  Portuguese), 
German,  Dutch,  Swedish,  Danish,  Welsh,  Irish, 
Russian,  and  innumerable  other  languages,  gender 
(at  least  with  regard  to  names  of  inanimate 
things),  is  a  mere  useless  classification  of  nouns  ; 
that  is  to  say,  it  expresses  no  distinctions  in 
thought.  So  it  was  in  all  dialects  of  English, 
so  far  as  we  know,  as  late  as  the  year  1000. 
But  two  centuries  later,  the  '  Ormulum,'  a  metrical 
harmony  of  the  Gospels  written  in  the  East 
Midland  dialect,  shows  that  gender  had  come 
to  be  entirely  dependent  on  meaning.  Instead 
of  being  a  useless  complication  in  the  grammar, 
it  had  become  a  valuable  means  of  expression. 
This  unique  and  momentous  change,  completed, 
so  far  as  one  dialect  is  concerned,  in  a  space  of 

regarded  as  personal.  A  personified  abstraction  is  regarded  im- 
aginatively as  male  or  female,  and  is  spoken  of  as  '  he '  or  '  she ' 
accordingly ;  so,  too,  with  certain  material  objects,  as  the  sun, 
the  moon,  a  ship.  On  the  other  hand,  a  baby,  or  an  animal, 
may  be  called  'it'  instead  of  'he'  or  'she,'  when  not  distinctly 
regarded  as  a  personal  being.  In  the  latter  case,  the  absence  of 
a  common-gender  pronoun  causes  us  to  avail  ourselves  of  the 
liberty  of  using  the  neuter  gender  more  frequently  than  we  other- 
wise should. 


ii.]         THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR          49 

two  centuries,  evidently  requires  to  be  accounted 
for.  It  is  closely  connected  with  another  change 
of  which  we  find  evidence  in  the  same  text. 
The  disuse  of  inflexion,  which  we  have  seen  to 
be  a  natural  consequence  of  the  admixture  of 
a  foreign  element  in  the  population,  had  in  the 
Danish  part  of  England  gone  so  far  that  the 
adjective  had  ceased  to  mark  gender  or  case 
by  difference  of  termination ;  and  the  article 
the  was  used  indeclinably  just  as  in  modern 
English.  Hence  the  gender  of  a  noun  had  no 
other  effect  on  the  sentence  than  that  of  de- 
termining the  choice  of  the  pronoun  referring 
to  it  As  the  inflexional  reminders  no  longer 
existed,  the  traditional  gender  of  the  nouns  was 
easily  forgotten,  and  the  pronouns  he,  she,  and 
it  came  to  be  used  with  strict  reference  to  the 
meaning  of  the  nouns  for  which  they  were 
substitutes. 

The  East  Midland  dialect,  as  has  been  already 
said,  is  the  ancestor  of  our  modern  literary  English. 
The  southern  dialects  kept  up  the  old  unmeaning 
genders,  and  the  inflexion  of  the  adjective  and 
article,  to  some  extent  down  to  the  fourteenth 
century.  Perhaps  the  final  disappearance  of 
'  grammatical '  gender,  for  which  there  were  many 
causes,  was  promoted  by  the  extensive  use  of 


50  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

the  French  language  in  England  ;  at  any  rate 
instances  have  been  found  in  Early  Middle 
English  in  which  the  gender  of  nouns  is  assimi- 
lated to  that  of  their  French  synonyms.  The 
uncertainty  thus  arising  would  naturally  strengthen 
the  tendency  to  adopt  the  significant  gender  of 
the  East  Midland  dialect 

In  the  writings  of  Chaucer,  which  extend  to 
the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century,  the  adjective, 
though  no  longer  inflected  for  gender  and  case, 
still  retains  some  traces  of  its  grammatical 
endings.  The  plural  was  marked  by  a  final  e ; 
and  an  adjective  also  took  a  final  e  when 
preceded  by  an  article  or  other  defining  word. 

But  in  the  following  century  these  endings 
quickly  disappeared,  in  obedience  to  a  tendency 
which  is  the  most  conspicuous  feature  in  the 
later  development  of  English  grammar,  the 
tendency  to  reduce  the  number  of  syllables  in 
words  wherever  it  was  possible.  The  movement 
towards  monosyllabism  continued  even  into  the 
nineteenth  century.  Within  the  memory  of  living 
persons  it  was  still  usual  in  the  reading  of  the 
Bible  or  the  Liturgy  to  make  two  syllables  of 
such  words  as  loved  and  changed,  which  are 
now  pronounced  in  one  syllable.  The  shortening 
tendency  has  so  widely  prevailed  that  every  short 


ii.]         THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR          51 

vowel  that  ended  a  word  in  Old  English  has 
dropped  off.  In  Chaucer's  English  the  various 
forms  of  the  verb  '  to  love '  were  all  disyllables  : 
(to)  loven  or  (to]  love,  (/)  love,  (we)  loven,  (/) 
lovede,  (we)  toveden.  In  modern  English  the 
only  parts  of  the  verb  that  are  not  monosyllables 
are  loving,  and  the  archaic  loves  t,  loveth,  lovedst. 
Although  our  grammar  is  almost  entirely  of  East 
Midland  origin,  the  form  loveth  which  belonged  to 
that  dialect  has  been  displaced  by  the  northern 
form  loves,  which  had  the  recommendation  of 
being  more  easily  contracted  into  a  mono- 
syllable. 

As  we  have  already  remarked,  the  simplifica- 
tion of  English  grammar  has  not  been  in  any 
considerable  degree  due  to  the  desire  for  uni- 
formity. If  such  a  desire  had  been  characteristic 
of  the  English  mind,  we  should  certainly  have 
got  rid  of  the  complicated  system  of  strong 
verbs  :  but  in  spite  of  the  many  changes  which 
that  system  has  undergone  in  detail,  it  remains 
just  as  intricate  as  it  was  in  Old  English.  One 
reason  is  that  the  strong  preterites  gave,  shook, 
came,  rode,  and  the  like,  are  easier  to  pronounce 
than  gived,  shaked,  corned,  rided.  The  instinct 
for  regularity  has  been  too  feeble  to  overcome 
the  resistance  of  tradition  when  supported  by 


52  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

the  preference  for  the  phonetically  easier  form. 
It  is  true  that  a  few  verbs  that  were  strong  in 
Old  English  are  now  'regular';  but  there  are 
quite  as  many  instances  of  the  contrary  change. 
In  the  modern  dug  and  stuck  (formerly  digged, 
sticked),  we  have  actually  a  new  strong  con- 
jugation. The  modern  forms,  it  may  be  noted, 
are  easier  to  pronounce  than  the  old  ones. 

There  is,  however,  one  point  in  the  conjugation 
of  verbs  which  does  exhibit  the  influence  of  the 
tendency  to  uniformity.  In  Old  English  most  of 
the  strong  preterites  had  different  vowels  in  the 
singular  and  plural,  as  in  ic  sang,  we  sungon. 
This  was  the  case  also  in  Middle  English  ;  but 
the  fact  that  in  modern  English  the  weak  preterite 
has  the  same  form  for  singular  and  plural  has 
led  to  the  disappearance  of  the  distinction  in  the 
strong  verbs  also  ;  we  use  sang  in  both  cases. 
The  second  person  singular  had  in  Old  English 
strong  verbs  the  same  vowel  as  the  plural,  and 
had  an  ending  different  from  that  of  the  weak 
verbs  :  thu  sunge,  thu  lufodest.  In  modern  English 
the  old  form  has  been  superseded  by  sangest,  after 
the  analogy  of  the  weak  verbs. 

The  only  feature  in  the  simplification  of  English 
accidence  that  remains  to  be  mentioned  is  the 
disappearance  of  the  subjunctive  mood.  In  Old 


ii.]         THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH   GRAMMAR  53 

English  the  subjunctive  played  as  important  a 
part  as  in  modern  German,  and  was  used  in  much 
the  same  way.  Its  inflexion  differed  in  several 
respects  from  that  of  the  indicative.  The  only 
formal  trace  of  the  old  subjunctive  still  remain- 
ing, except  the  use  of  be  and  were,  is  the  omission 
of  the  final  s  in  the  third  person  singular  of 
verbs.  And  even  this  is  rapidly  dropping  out 
of  use,  its  only  remaining  function  being  to 
emphasize  the  uncertainty  of  a  supposition.  Per- 
haps in  another  generation  the  subjunctive  forms 
will  have  ceased  to  exist  except  in  the  single 
instance  of  were,  which  serves  a  useful  function, 
although  we  manage  to  dispense  with  a  corre- 
sponding form  in  other  verbs. 


§  2.   New   Grammatical   Material. 

The  disappearance  of  the  Old  English  inflexions 
is  only  half  the  story  of  the .  development  of 
English  grammar.  A  considerable  amount  of 
new  grammatical  material  has  been  introduced, 
to  serve  the  needs  of  expression  in  cases  where 
the  old  machinery  has  become  inefficient  through 
phonetic  change  and  other  causes,  or  where  it 
was  from  the  beginning  inadequate  for  its 
purpose. 


54  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

We  have  now  to  see  from  what  sources  this 
new  material  was  derived,  and  what  were  the 
necessities  which  led  to  its  adoption. 

It  is  not  very  often  that  a  language  enriches 
its  grammatical  system  by  adoption  from  other 
tongues ;  but  owing  to  the  peculiar  circumstances 
of  -English  its  history  presents  a  few  examples  of 
this  rare  phenomenon.  In  Old  English  the  per- 
sonal pronouns  of  the  third  person  were  as  follows: 

SINGULAR.  PLURAL. 

Masculine.         Feminine.  Neuter. 


Nominative 

he 

heo,  hie,  hi 

hit 

hie,  hi 

Accusative 

hine 

hie,  hi 

hit 

hie,  hi 

Genitive 

his 

hire 

his 

heora 

Dative 

him 

hire 

him 

heom 

It  will  be  seen  from  this  table  that  the  words 
'  he/  '  she/  and  '  they  '  were  very  nearly  alike  ; 
and  in  the  process  of  phonetic  change  they  came 
to  be  represented  in  southern  Middle  English  by 
the  one  form  he}  In  the  same  way,  the  single 
form  here  came  to  stand  both  for  '  her '  (genitive 
and  dative)  and  for  '  their.'  This  ambiguity  of 
forms  was  a  defect  which  the  language  had  no 
means  of  remedying  from  its  own  resources.  But 
it  so  happened  that  in  the  parts  of  England 

1  In  the  dialects  of  the  south-western  counties  he  is  still  used  for 
the  feminine  as  well  as  for  the  masculine  pronoun.  "He  is  their 
mother"  is  one  of  the  many  examples  quoted  in  the  English  Dialect 
Dictionary. 


ii.]         THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR          55 

which  were  largely  inhabited  by  Danes  the  native 
pronouns  were  supplanted  by  the  Scandinavian 
pronouns  which  are  represented  by  the  modern 
she?-  they,  them,  their.  These  forms,  recommended 
by  their  superior  clearness,  gradually  made  their 
way  from  their  original  home  in  the  north  and 
the  north-east  midlands  into  the  dialects  of  the 
rest  of  England.  Their  progress,  however,  was 
not  very  rapid  :  Chaucer  uses  she,  but  his  her 
serves  for  the  genitive,  dative,  and  accusative  of 
the  feminine  singular  and  the  genitive  plural. 
This  is  much  the  same  state  of  things  as  exists 
in  modern  German,  where  ihr  Haus  may  be 
either  '  her  house  '  or  '  their  house  '  (Ihr  Haus, 
written  with  a  capital  /,  but  pronounced  in  the 
same  way,  is  '  your  house '),  and  ihr  may  also 
mean  '  to  her '  and  '  you.'  Perhaps  the  want  of 
distinction  between  the  pronouns  did  not  often 
occasion  any  actual  misunderstanding,  but  clearly 
the  introduction  of  the  Danish  forms  was  a  real 
improvement. 

In  some  other  points  English  has  found  means 
to  improve  its  pronouns  without  calling  in  foreign 

1  The  origin  of  this  pronoun  is  unexplained,  but  the  fact  that 
they,  them,  then  represent  Scandinavian  demonstrative  pronouns 
favours  the  hypothesis  that  she  is  connected  in  some  obscure  way 
with  the  Old  Norse  feminine  demonstratives  sit  and  sid,  which  had 
often  the  function  of  personal  pronouns. 


56  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

aid.  One  defect  of  the  Old  English  pronominal 
system  was  that  his  was  both  masculine  and 
neuter.  While  gender  was  merely  '  grammatical ' 
this  did  not  greatly  matter.  But  when  gender 
became  significant,  people  began  to  feel  that  the 
use  of  his  referring  to  inanimate  things  involved 
a  sort  of  personification.  We  see  traces  of 
this  feeling  in  the  English  Bible  of  1611,  where 
his  is  the  ordinary  genitive  of  it  (or,  as  for 
this  date  it  is  perhaps  more  correct  to  say,  the 
corresponding  possessive  pronoun),  but  her  is 
sometimes  used  where  it  was  felt  that  a  male 
personification  would  be  very  inappropriate.  Still 
earlier  (in  1534),  we  find  Tindale  writing:  "If 
salt  have  loste  hyr  saltnes,  what  shall  be  seasoned 
ther  with  ?  "  In  North  West  Midland  writings  we 
find  it  (Jiif]  used  as  a  possessive  pronoun  as  early 
as  the  fourteenth  century,  and  this  use  is  still 
common  in  dialects.  The  first  writer,  so  far  as  is 
known,  to  append  the  regular  possessive  ending 
to  it  was  the  foreigner,  Florio,  who  uses  its  in 
1598,  and  several  times  in  his  later  works. 
Shakspere  has  one  or  two  examples  of  the 
possessive  it  ("  Go  to  it  grandam,  and  it  grandam 
shall  give  it  a  plum  "),  and  in  those  plays  which 
exist  only  in  editions  published  after  his  death  its 
occurs  a  few  times.  The  Bible  of  1611  has  no 


ii.]         THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR          57 

it s ;  in  one  passage  (Lev.  xxv.  5)  we  read  "that 
groweth  of  //  own  accord,"  but  in  the  modern 
editions  its  has  been  substituted.  The  use  of  its 
became  general  in  the  seventeenth  century,  but 
for  a  long  time  there  seems  to  have  been  a  feeling 
that  the  older  his  or  her  was  more  dignified. 

Another  beneficial  change  in  English  pronouns 
was  due  to  the  accident  that — in  accordance  with 
the  tendency  towards  shortening,  of  which  we 
have  before  spoken — the  final  n  in  unemphatic 
monosyllables  was  often  dropped.  (Examples 
may  be  seen  in  the  indefinite  article  a,  which  is 
an  unemphatic  form  of  the  numeral  one,  and  in 
t,  d  for  in  and  0#.)  It  was  this  circumstance 
that  produced  the  difference  between  the  forms 
of  the  same  pronoun  in  '  This  is  my  book '  and 
'This  book  is  mine'  It  is  true  that  the  full 
forms  mine  and  thine  long  continued  to  be  used 
before  a  noun  beginning  with  a  vowel  or  k,  as 
in  mine  arm,  mine  host,  which  we  still  retain  in 
poetry  and  in  rhetorical  use ;  but  in  the  main 
my  and  thy  were  the  forms  for  the  attributive 
possessive,  and  mine  and  thine  for  the  absolute 
possessive.  The  ending  of  mine  and  thine  was 
imitated  in  hern,  hisn,  ourn,  yourn,  and  theirn 
(some  of  which  go  back  to  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury), but  these  forms  survive  only  as  vulgarisms. 


58  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

In  educated  English,  however,  the  want  of  an 
'  absolute '  possessive  has  been  supplied,  except 
in  the  case  of  his,  by  tacking  on  the  ending  of 
possessive  nouns  to  the  ordinary  possessive  pro- 
noun. We  say  '  this  house  is  yours'  just  as 
we  say  '  this  house  is  John's'  Perhaps  it  would 
have  been  better  if  the  literary  language  had 
accepted  hisn,  but  from  some  cause  it  did  not 
do  so. 

It  cannot  be  said  that  the  prevalence  of  the 
French  language  in  England  down  to  the  four- 
teenth century  has  left  many  traces  in  modern 
English  grammar.  We  get  from  French  the  so- 
called  feminine  ending  -ess,  which  we  now  add 
quite  freely  to  native  English  words ;  but  this 
does  not  strictly  belong  to  grammar,  any  more 
than  does  our  adoption  of  many  other  foreign 
suffixes,  such  as  -ment  and  -ize.  However,  as 
the  adoption  of  -ess  has  been  mentioned,  we  may 
call  attention  to  the  curious  fact  that  this  ending 
has  never  been  used  in  English  for  what  one 
might  have  thought  its  most  natural  purpose, 
the  formation  of  names  of  female  animals.  The 
few  words  that  we  have  of  this  kind,  like  tigress, 
lioness,  are  not  of  English  origin,  but  were  adopted 
from  Old  French.  In  spite  of  the  analogy  of 
these  substantives,  it  seems  always  to  have  been 


ii.]         THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH   GRAMMAR  59 

felt    that    the    ending    was    appropriate    only    to 
designations  of  persons. 

Probably  it  is  in  some  degree  owing  to  French 
influence  that  our  language  was  able  to  develop 
one  useful  piece  of  grammatical  machinery — 
namely,  an  additional  mode  of  expressing  the 
notion  of  the  genitive  case.  We  can  still  say 
'  David's  son,'  as  our  ancestors  a  thousand  years 
ago  said  Dauldes  sunu  (or,  less  frequently,  se  sunu 
Dauldes} ;  but  we  can  also  express  the  same 
meaning  by  saying  '  the  son  of  David,'  which 
corresponds  to  the  French  le  fils  de  David.  In 
Old  English  of  was  mainly  used  where  we  should 
now  use  '  from '  or  '  out  of  The  same  sense 
also  belongs  to  the  French  de.  There  are  in 
Old  English  a  few  special  instances  in  which  of 
has  a  genitival  sense  (as  in  se  cyning  of  Norwegan, 
the  king  of  Norway),  but  the  use  of  the  preposition 
as  a  regular  sign  of  the  genitive  first  appears  in 
the  twelfth  century.  We  do  not  know  whether, 
apart  from  French  influence,  the  English  language 
would  not  have  evolved  this  convenient  device 
for  obviating  the  ambiguities  arising  from  the 
decay  of  the  old  inflexions ;  but  imitation  of 
French  idiom  certainly  helped  it  to  attain  general 
currency.  The  many  nouns  adopted  from  French 
naturally  formed  their  genitive  after  the  French 


60  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

pattern  ;  and  the  new  form  was  also  applied  to 
those  nouns  which  had  lost  their  distinctive 
genitive  inflexions.  Ultimately  it  came  to  be 
admissible  in  the  case  of  all  substantives.  If  the 
inflected  genitive  had  been  driven  out  of  use  by 
the  '  phrasal '  genitive  the  result  would  have  been 
a  weakening  of  the  language — a  distinct  loss  of 
condensation  and  energy.  Fortunately  this  did 
not  happen  ;  the  form  in  -s  was  retained,  but 
its  use  was  restricted  to  instances  in  which  it 
was  convenient  that  the  genitive  should  precede 
the  governing  noun  instead  of  following  it.  In 
this  way  there  was  developed  a  difference  in 
meaning  and  emphasis  between  the  inflected 
and  the  phrasal  genitive,  and  the  fact  that 
modern  English  possesses  both  enables  us  to 
express  shades  of  meaning  which  cannot  be  ren- 
dered with  equal  precision  either  in  French  or 
Latin.  For  example,  if  we  substitute  the  ex- 
pression '  England's  history '  for  the  more  usual 
'  the  history  of  England/  we  indicate  that  the 
name  of  the  country  is  used  with  some  approach 
to  personification.  Even  where  the  signification 
of  the  two  forms  is  identical,  there  is  a  distinction 
of  emphasis  or  feeling  which  it  is  not  easy  for 
a  foreigner  to  apprehend. 

The    rule    that    the    genitive    in    's    must     be 


ii.]         THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR          61 

followed  immediately  (or  only  with  the  inter- 
vention of  an  adjective,  or  an  adjective  qualified 
by  an  adverb)  by  the  governing  substantive,  has 
given  rise  in  modern  English  to  the  practice  of 
treating  the  'j  virtually  as  a  separable  word  (a 
'  postposition,'  as  we  might  call  it),  and  attach- 
ing it  to  a  whole  descriptive  phrase  expressing  a 
single  idea,  as  in  '  the  Duke  of  Devonshire's 
estates.'  Colloquially,  this  practice  is  sometimes 
carried  to  quite  grotesque  extremes.  We  hear 
occasionally  such  sentences  as  '  That  was  the 
man  I  met  at  Birmingham's  idea.'  Here  the 
intonation  of  oral  speech,  which  cannot  be  re- 
produced in  writing,  shows  that  the  phrase 
'the-man-I-met-at-Birmingham '  is  for  the  nonce 
converted  into  a  word,  which  can  take  the  in- 
flexional 's  like  any  ordinary  substantive.  The 
'  group-genitive,'  as  it  is  called,  is  a  useful  addi- 
tion to  the  resources  of  the  language,  as  it  is 
more  direct  and  forcible  than  the  synonymous 
form  with  of.  The  need  for  a  '  group-plural,' 
formed  in  a  similar  way,  is  sometimes  felt.  Such 
a  formation  is,  for  obvious  reasons,  inadmissible 
in  writing,  except  in  such  simple  cases  as  '  the 
Miss  Smiths,'  'the  two  Dr.  Johnsons';  but  in 
conversation  it  would  be  possible,  without  causing 
much  surprise,  to  speak  of  '  a  whole  gallery  of 


62  THE   MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

John  the  Baptists,'  or  (referring  to  tavern  signs) 
of  '  the  innumerable  King's  Armses  and  Duke  of 
Wellingtons.' 

A  grammatical  innovation,  of  somewhat  ques- 
tionable value,  which  is  due  to  French  influence, 
is  the  polite  substitution  of  the  plural  for  the 
singular  in  the  second  person.  The  origin  of  this 
custom  is  to  be  found  in  the  official  Latin  of  the 
later  Roman  Empire,  in  which  a  great  person  of 
state  was  addressed  with  '  you  '  instead  of  '  thou,' 
just  as,  in  formal  documents,  he  wrote  '  we ' 
instead  of  '  I.'  The  use  of  the  plural  'you,'  as 
a  mark  of  respect,  passed  into  all  the  Romanic 
languages,  and  from  them  into  German,  Dutch, 
and  Scandinavian.  It  is  a  well-known  fact  that 
forms  of  politeness  originally  used  only  in  address- 
ing superiors  have  in  all  languages  a  tendency 
to  become  more  and  more  widely  applied  ;  and 
hence  in  Europe  generally  the  singular  '  thou ' 
has,  except  in  religious  language  and  in  diction 
more  or  less  poetical,  come  to  be  used  only  in 
speaking  to  intimate  friends  or  inferiors.  In 
England,  during  the  last  two  centuries,  the  use  of 
thou,  so  far  as  ordinary  language  is  concerned,  has 
become  obsolete  ;  it  is  only  among  the  speakers 
of  some  northern  dialects  that  it  continues  to  be 
employed  even  by  parents  to  their  children,  or  by 


ii.]         THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR          63 

brothers  and  sisters  to  each  other.  Our  language 
has  thus  lost  whatever  advantage  it  had  gained 
by  having  a  polite  as  well  as  a  familiar  form  of 
address  ;  and  unfortunately  the  form  that  has 
survived  is  ambiguous.  There  is  a  translation  of 
the  New  Testament  into  modern  English  in 
which  you  is  everywhere  substituted  for  thou, 
except  in  addresses  to  the  Deity.  It  is  a  signi- 
ficant fact  that  in  one  place  the  translator  has 
felt  obliged  to  inform  his  readers  by  a  footnote 
that  in  the  original  the  pronoun  changes  from  the 
plural  to  the  singular.  The  English  language  is, 
in  respect  of  clearness,  decidedly  the  worse  for 
the  change  which  has  abolished  the  formal  dis- 
tinction of  number  in  the  second  person  of  the 
pronoun  and  the  verb. 

One  highly  important  feature  of  English  gram- 
mar which  has  been  developed  since  Old  English 
days  is  what  has  been  called  the  attributive  use 
of  the  substantive,  which  may  be  exemplified  by 
such  expressions  as  '  a  silk  hat,'  '  the  London 
County  Council,'  'the  Shakspere  Tercentenary,' 
'Church  of  England  principles,'  '  a  House  of  Com- 
mons debate,'  '  the  Marriage  Law  Amendment 
Act,'  '  the  half-past  two  train,'  *  the  London, 
Brighton,  and  South  Coast  Railway,'  '  the  High- 
street  front  of  the  Town  Hall,'  'my  lawyer 


64  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

cousin.'  No  other  European  language  has  any- 
thing exactly  parallel  to  this  usage.  In  German, 
it  is  true,  many  of  the  English  attributive  com- 
binations could  be  rendered  by  compound  nouns, 
which  in  that  language  may  be  formed  very 
freely  ;  but  others  must  be  translated  by  substi- 
tuting an  adjective  for  the  attributive  noun,  and 
others  again  by  a  circumlocution  of  some  kind. 
The  difference  between  one  of  these  English 
expressions  and  the  German  compound  which 
corresponds  to  it  is  not  merely  that  the  latter  is 
written  as  one  word  and  the  former  is  written 
with  spaces  between  its  parts.  In  speaking 
English  we  feel  that  the  elements  of  such  a 
combination  are  as  much  distinct  words  as  are 
the  adjective  and  the  following  substantive,  or  the 
genitive  noun  and  the  noun  which  governs  it. 
The  English  noun  used  attributively  might  be 
described  grammatically  in  various  ways.  We 
might  say  that  the  noun  was  in  a  case  expressing 
a  relation  somewhat  similar  to  that  expressed  by 
the  genitive,  but  wider.  Or  we  might  say  that  it 
was  a  new  part  of  speech,  halfway  between  the 
substantive  and  the  adjective.  As  English  adjec- 
tives have  no  inflexions,  there  is  no  formal 
criterion  by  which  we  can  distinguish  an  attri- 
butive substantive  from  an  adjective  ;  and  in  fact 


n.]         THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR          65 

many  substantives,  from  being  often  used  attri- 
butively, come  to  be  really  adjectives..  The  germ 
from  which  the  attributive  use  of  substantives 
has  been  developed  is  the  compound  noun.  In 
Old  English,  as  in  German,  Greek,  and  other 
languages,  two  substantives  could  be  put  together 
to  form  one  word.  The  accent  of  the  word  was 
placed  on  the  first  element,  which  served  to  limit 
the  sense  of  the  second  element  to  a  special 
application.  English  has  still  many  compounds 
of  this  sort,  such  as  bookcase,  coach-house,  wdterpot; 
and  indeed  we  can  form  new  words  of  this  kind 
very  freely.  Now  very  often  it  happens  that  the 
first  element  of  such  a  combination  has  (as  used 
in  this  position)  a  sense  in  which  it  is  nearly 
equivalent  to  an  adjective  or  to  a  noun  in  the 
genitive.  In  such  cases  the  two  elements  of  a 
compound  came  in  Middle  English  l  to  be  appre- 
hended as  separate  words,  and  each  of  them  was 
pronounced  with  its  independent  accent.  In  this 
way  it  was  that  English  grammar  was  enriched 
by  the  creation  of  the  attributive  noun.  It 

1  It  is  difficult  to  fix  the  period  at  which  this  development  began  ; 
it  would  be  a  great  mistake  to  suppose  that  when  a  combination  of 
substantives  is  in  Middle  English  wiitten  as  two  words  that  affords 
any  proof  that  the  two  were  not  apprehended  as  forming  a  com- 
pound. In  Middle  English,  as  in  Old  English,  a  genuine  compound 
was  very  often  written  with  the  parts  separated. 

E 


66  THE   MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

often  makes  a  noteworthy  difference  to  the  sense 
whether  an  attributive  combination  is  taken  as 
two  words  or  as  one.  If  we  hear  of  '  the  school- 
house'  we  think  of  a  house  which  is  used  as  a 
school  ;  on  the  other  hand,  '  the  school  house ' 
(with  two  accents)  suggests  a  house  which  belongs 
to  the  school.  The  development  of  the  attributive 
construction  has  greatly  increased  the  flexibility 
and  compactness  of  the  language.  As  will  be 
seen  from  some  of  the  examples  given  above,  we 
can  use  a  whole  complex  phrase  attributively  as  if 
it  -were  a  single  substantive. 

Yet  another  means  by  which  English  has  added 
to  its  resources  of  expression  during  the  last 
thousand  years  is  the  extended  use  of  auxiliaries 
in-the  conjugation  of  the  verb.  The  Old  English 
verb  was  very  deficient  in  contrivances  for  in- 
dicating distinctions  of  tense.  It  had  only  two 
regular  tenses,  a  present,  which  served  also  as 
future,  and  a  past.  A  beginning  had,  however, 
been  made  towards  supplementing  this  inadequate 
system  by  using  certain  verbs  as  auxiliaries, 
though  these  were  employed  only  when  the  need 
for  precise  expression  was  especially  urgent.  If 
it  was  necessary  unambiguously  to  designate  an 
event  as  future,  recourse  was  had  to  a  figure  of 
speech,  much  in  the  same  way  as  a  person  who 


ii.]         THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR          67 

did  not  know  how  to  form  the  future  tense  in 
some  foreign  tongue  might  say  '  the  sun  is  in 
debt  to  rise  at  six,'  or  '  coal  intends  to  be  cheaper.' 
The  verbs  which  in  Old  English  expressed  the 
notion  of  debt  or  obligation  and  that  of  wish  or 
intention  were  respectively  sceal  (our  '  shall ')  and 
wile  ('  will ')  ;  and  the  figurative  use  of  these  verbs 
resulted  in  their  being  employed  as  mere  signs  of 
the  future  tense.  When  it  was  desired  to  express, 
more  definitely  than  could  be  done  by  the  simple 
past  tense,  the  sense  of  what  we  call  the  perfect1 
or  the  pluperfect,  the  device  employed  was  that 
of  combining  the  present  or  past  of  the  verb  *  to 
have '  with  the  passive  participle.  It  is  easy  to 
see  how  this  contrivance  was  suggested.  If  I  say 
'  I  have  a  letter  written,'  where  have  is  used  in  its 
primary  sense,  the  sentence  expresses  the  same 
fact  as  '  I  have  written  a  letter,'  though  it  expresses 
something  else  in  addition,  viz.,  that  the  letter  is 
still  in  my  possession.  From  being  used  in  cases 
of  this  kind,  the  combination  of  have  with  a 

1  The  use  of  the  perfect  tense  is  to  indicate  that  a  fact  relating  to 
the  past  K  viewed  as  an  element  in  the  present  condition  or  character 
of  the  subject,  or  as  a  portion  of  a  history  that  extends  to  the  present 
moment.  Thus  we  can  say  'England  has  had  many  able  rulers,' 
but  if  we  substitute  '  Assyria '  for  '  England '  the  tense  must  be 
changed.  It  is  allowable  to  say  '  Aristotle  has  treated  this  subject 
in  his  Ethics,' just  as  we  say  'Aristotle  says  so  and  so';  but  we 
cannot  say  '  Aristotle  has  written  the  Ethics. ' 


68  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

participle  naturally  came  to  serve  as  a  mere  com- 
pound tense,  as  in  '  he  haefth  anne  man  ofsl<zgennel 
literally,  '  he  has  a  man  killed.'  Here  the  parti- 
ciple agrees  like  an  adjective  with  the  object 
noun,  but  in  later  Old  English  it  was  made  in- 
declinable. The  practice  of  putting  the  object 
after  the  participle  did  not  become  general  till  the 
fourteenth  century. 

The  perfect  and  pluperfect  of  intransitive  verbs 
could  be  expressed  in  Old  English  by  the  verb 
to  be  and  the  participle,  as  we  still  do  in  sentences 
like  '  Babylon  is  fallen,'  '  the  work  is  finished.' 
The  latter  form  is  ambiguous  in  the  modern 
language,  but  it  was  not  so  in  Old  English, 
because  the  present  and  past  of  the  passive  were 
expressed  by  the  auxiliary  weorthan,  literally  '  to 
become'  (equivalent  to  the  German  werden)\  which 
in  later  English  was  unfortunately  lost. 

In  these  auxiliary  verbs  Old  English  possessed 
an  instrument  of  expression  which  admitted  of 
being  greatly  developed.  It  was  only  necessary 
to  conjugate  each  auxiliary  through  all  its  simple 
and  compound  tenses  to  produce  a  system  capable 
of  rendering  almost  every  shade  of  meaning  which 
is  conveyed  by  the  verbal  inflexions  of  any 
language.  The  actual  development,  however,  was 
gradual  and  slow  ;  the  abundant  material  which 


II.].        THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR          69 

lay  ready  to  hand  was  brought  into  use  by 
degrees,  in  response  to  the  growing  need  for 
accuracy  of  expression  which  was  produced  by 
the  increased  use  of  the  language  for  literary 
composition.  We  have  not  space  to  discuss  in 
detail  the  history  of  the  English  system  of  verbal 
conjugation,  but  some  few  of  its  more  remarkable 
features  may  be  briefly  pointed  out. 

One  point  that  is  especially  worthy  of  notice 
is  that  the  development  of  the  functions  of  the 
verbal  forms,  in  the  direction  of  increase  of  clear- 
ness, has  continued  till  very  recent  times,  many 
changes  of  great  value  having  taken  place  during 
the  last  three  centuries. 

We  may  consider  in  the  first  place  the  develop- 
ment of  the  auxiliary  uses  of  the  verb  to  be. 
Although  the  form  '  I  am  speaking '  came  into 
use  very  early  in  Middle  English1  (the  correspond- 
ing form  of  the  past  tense  having  existed  already 
in  Old  English),  it  was  not  till  the  seventeenth 
century  was  well  advanced  that  it  became  the 
regular  expression  for  the  true  present  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  present  of  habit.  Such  a 
sentence  as  '  thy  mother  and  thy  sisters  seek 
thee '  was  normal  English  when  the  Bible  was 

.  1  There  are  one  or  two  examples  of  it  in  Old  English  writings : 
e.g.  in  /Elfric's  translation  of  Joshua  x.  25. 


70  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

translated  ;  nowadays,  in  natural  prose  speech,  we 
can  only  say 'are  seeking.'  The  analogous  passive 
forms,  as  in  '  the  house  is  being  built,'  '  he  was 
being  taught  to  ride,'  were  hardly  known  till  near 
the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  long 
afterwards  they  were  condemned  by  sticklers  for 
grammatical  correctness.  Yet  the  innovation  was 
clearly  needed  :  the  older  mode  of  speech,  as  in 
'  the  house  is  building,'  or  even  the  fuller  form 
used  in  the  seventeenth  century,  '  the  house  is 
a-building/  could  not  be  employed  in  all  contexts 
without  inconvenience.  In  such  expressions  as  '  I 
have  been  working  hard,'  '  it  has  often  been  said,' 
'  if  you  were  to  do  such  a  thing,'  we  have  instances 
of-  the  manner  in  which,  by  following  out  the 
analogy  of  older  forms,  the  language  has  found 
means  for  representing  shades  of  signification 
which  had  previously  no  accurate  expression. 

Another  auxiliary  which  has  acquired  its  most 
important  function  in  quite  modern  times  is  the 
verb  to  do.  In  Old  English,  it  was  already 
possible  to  say  '  I  do  speak,'  '  he  did  answer '  in- 
stead of  the  simple  '  I  speak,'  '  he  answered.'  But 
down  to  the  seventeenth  century  there  is  no  very 
clear  difference  in  meaning  between  the  two  forms. 
When,  for  instance,  we  read  in  the  Bible  of  161 1, 
'  and  they  did  eat,  and  were  all  filled,'  it  is  not 


II.]         THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR          71 

easy  to  see  any  reason,  except  the  very  good  one 
that  it  improves  the  rhythm  of  the  sentence,  why 
the  verb  should  be  'did  eat '  and  not  ' ate.'  The 
words  do  and  did,  however,  like  any  other  auxiliary, 
admitted  of  being  pronounced  with  strong  stress, 
so  as  to  emphasize  the  tense  or  the  affirmative 
character  of  the  sentence,  or  to  give  to  the  state- 
ment an  exclamatory  tone  which  intensifies  the 
sense  of  the  verb.  This  emphatic  use  of  the 
auxiliary  is  obviously  valuable,  and  it  has  gained 
in  force  and  clearness  from  the  fact  that  (during 
the  last  three  centuries)  the  unemphatic  do  and 
did,  in  affirmative  sentences,  have  become  obsolete. 
In  negative  and  interrogative  sentences,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  compound  tenses  formed  with  do 
and  did  have  since  Shakspere's  time  quite  super- 
seded the  simple  present  and  past,  except  in  the 
case  of  a  very  few  verbs,  such  as  do,  have}  and 
be.  We  can  no  longer  say,  in  plain  prose,  '  I 
went  not  away,'  '  Heard  you  the  voice  ? '  The 

1  With  regard  to  this  verb  there  has  been  developed  a  convenient 
distinction  in  usage  which  seems  to  be  in  danger  of  being  lost. 
The  use  of  the  auxiliary  do  is  correct  English  only  when  have 
expresses  something  occasional  or  habitual,  not  when  the  object  is  a 
permanent  possession  or  attribute.  It  is  permissible  to  say  'Do 
you  have  breakfast  at  eight?'  or  'We  do  not  have  many  visitors'; 
but  not  '  Does  she  have  blue  eyes  ? '  or  '  He  did  not  have  a  good 
character.'  Many  American  writers  violate  this  rule,  and  the 
faulty  use  appears  to  be  gaining  ground  in  England. 


)*  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

explanation  of  the  change  perhaps  is  that  owing 
to  the  more  frequent  use  of  compound  tenses  it 
became  unusual  for  the  particle  not  or  the  subject 
of  an  interrogative  sentence  to  follow  any  verb 
but  an  auxiliary,  so  that  the  instances  in  which 
this  occurred  were  apt  to  sound  unnatural. 

The  history  of  shall  and  will  is  another  illus- 
tration of  the  continuous  struggle  of  language 
towards  clearness  of  expression.  Our  future 
auxiliaries  are  not  very  well  suited  to  their 
purpose,  because  their  meaning,  as  we  have 
already  mentioned,  includes  something  besides 
the  idea  of  future  time.  Intrinsically,  therefore, 
they  are  inferior  to  the  colourless  and  unequivocal 
German  auxiliary  werden.  When  we  wish  to 
express  simple  futurity,  we  are  obliged  to  choose 
between  two  forms,  one  of  which  implies  obliga- 
tion, and  the  other  will  or  intention.  For  many 
centuries  the  language  was  feeling  its  way  to  a 
rule  for  the  employment  of  these  forms,  such 
that  their  excess  of  meaning  should  occasion 
the  -smallest  amount  of  ambiguity.  It  is  only 
in  recent  times  that  the  problem  has  been  solved  : 
as  is  well  known,  the  English  Bible  often  has 
shall  where  we  now  feel  that  will  would  be 
more  appropriate.  The  present  rule,  though 
Scotchmen  and  Irishmen  still  find  it  difficult  to 


ii.]         THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR          73 

master,  rests  on  a  very  intelligible  principle. 
Future  events  are  divided  into  two  classes,  those 
which  depend  on  the  present  volition  of  the 
speaker,  and  those  which  do  not.  In  the  former 
case  we  say  '  I  will,'  and  '  you  or  he  shall ' ;  in 
the  latter  case  we  say  '  I  shall,'  and  '  you  or  he 
will.'  There  are  many  exceptions,  each  with  its 
own  special  reason  ;  but  in  the  main  the  rule 
is  correct.  Some  ambiguity  in  the  use  of  will 
still  remains  possible,  because  such  a  statement 
as  '  he  will  do  it '  may  either  express  mere 
futurity  or  may  mean  that  the  person  is  deter- 
mined to  act  in  the  manner  indicated.  The 
sense  of  shall^  however,  has  become  quite  un- 
equivocal, and  perhaps  we  may  say  that  the 
language  has  at  length  succeeded  in  making 
the  best  possible  use  of  its  inherited  means  of 
expressing  future  time. 

Much  more  might  be  said  respecting  the 
gradual  enrichment  of  the  English  verbal  con- 
jugation. Owing  very  largely  to  the  develop- 
ments of  the  last  three  centuries,  modern  English 
is  able  to  render  with  perfect  precision  almost 
every  distinction  in  thought  which  is  expressed 
by  the  modification  of  the  verb  in  any  language. 
It  may,  however,  be  remarked  that  the  increased 
precision  of  modern  English,  though  it  is  a  great 


74  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

gain  for  the  purposes  of  matter-of-fact  statement, 
is  sometimes  the  reverse  of  an  advantage  for  the 
language  of  emotion  and  contemplation.  Hence 
we  find  that  our  poetry,  and  our  higher  literature 
in  general,  often  returns  to  the  less  developed 
grammar  of  the  Elizabethan  age. 


§  3.     Profit  and  Loss. 

In  the  foregoing  pages  we  have  described,  and 
tried  to  account  for,  the  more  important  of  the 
changes  in  the  grammatical  structure  of  English 
that  have  taken  place  since  the  days  of  King 
Alfred.  We  have  now  to  ask  how  far  the  results 
of  these  changes  have  been  good,  and  how  far 
they  have  been  evil,  in  their  influence  on  the 
efficiency  of  the  language  as  an  instrument  of 
expression. 

It  has  been  maintained  by  some  scholars  that 
in  the  evolution  of  language  everything  happens 
for  the  best,  and  that  English  in  particular  has 
lost  nothing,  at  least  so  far  as  its  grammar  is 
concerned,  that  would  have  been  worth  keeping. 
But  this  extreme  optimistic  view  can  hardly  be 
sustained.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  in 
writing  modern  English  special  care  and  in- 
genuity are  often  required  to  avoid  falling  into 


ii.]         THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR          75 

ambiguities.  Every  unpractised  writer  of  English 
frequently  finds  it  necessary  to  alter  a  sentence 
which  accurately  expresses  his  meaning,  because 
he  perceives  that  the  reader  might  for  a  moment 
be  in  doubt  whether  a  particular  word  should 
be  taken  as  a  noun  or  a  verb,  or  whether,  if  it 
is  a  verb,  it  is  meant  for  the  infinitive  or  the 
present  tense.  And  if  we  venture  on  those 
inversions  of  the  normal  order  of  words  which 
when  skilfully  used  contribute  so  much  to  force 
and  beauty  of  expression,  we  have  further  to 
take  care  that  the  subject  of  the  sentence  is 
not  mistaken  for  the  object.  Much  of  our 
poetry  is  obscure  on  a  first  reading,  not  because 
the  diction  is  affected  or  allusive,  but  because 
the  structure  of  the  language  has  compelled  the 
poet  to  choose  between  the  claims  of  lucidity 
and  those  of  emphasis  or  grace.  There  are 
passages  in  many  English  poets  which  are 
puzzling  even  to  native  readers,  but  which  if 
rendered  literally  into  Latin  or  German  would 
appear  quite  simple  and  straightforward.  Of 
course  it  is  possible  to  write  as  lucidly  in  English 
as  in  any  other  language ;  but  in  order  to  do 
so  we  must  use  constant  watchfulness,  and  must 
sometimes  reject  the  most  obvious  form  of  ex- 
pression for  one  that  is  more  artificial.  In 


76  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

colloquial  English,  again,  there  are  some  abbre- 
viations which  sometimes  occasion  inconvenience 
by  their  doubtful  meaning:  thus  he's  may  be  either 
'  he  is '  or  '  he  has,'  and  I'd  may  be  either  '  I  had ' 
or  '  I  would.'  It  is  true  that  no  known  language 
is  so  perfect  as  not  to  have  its  own  liability  to 
ambiguity1 ;  and  in  this  respect  Old  English  was 
already  greatly  inferior  to  Greek  or  even  to  Latin. 
Still,  when  the  fullest  allowance  is  made  for  this 
fact,  it  remains  unquestionable  that  the  loss  of  the 
Old  English  inflexions  has  not  been  unattended 
with  disadvantage. 

On  the  other  hand,  modern  English,  viewed 
with  reference  to  its  grammar,  has  certain  merits 
in  which  it  is  scarcely  rivalled  by  any  other 
tongue.  We  have  already  pointed  out  the  great 
value  of  some  of  the  additions  which  the  language 
has  made  to  its  grammatical  resources  during  the 
last  thousand  years.  But  it  is  not  merely  by 
the  acquisition  of  new  machinery  that  English 
has  gained  in  efficiency  as  a  means  of  expression. 
The  disappearance  of  superfluous  inflexions,  and 
the  reduction  of  those  which  remain  to  mere  con- 
sonantal suffixes  which  in  most  instances  do  not 

1  For  instance,  in  Latin  (partly  on  account  of  the  impairment  of 
its  inflexional  system  through  phonetic  change)  there  is  an  extra- 
ordinary abundance  of  forms  which,  apart  from  their  context,  would 
admit  of  two  or  more  different  interpretations. 


ii.]         THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  GRAMMAR          77 

add  a  syllable,  have  greatly  increased  the  capacity 
of  the  language  for  vigorous  condensation.  There 
are  very  few  languages  in  which  it  is  possible, 
as  it  is  in  English,  to  write  whole  pages  almost 
exclusively  in  words  of  one  syllable.  Of  course 
we  are  not  compelled  to  do  this :  our  language 
is  quite  as  capable  as  any  other  of  the  variety 
of  rhythm  which  is  imparted  by  the  use  of 
words  of  differing  length.  But  we  cannot  read 
any  of  our  modern  poets  without  seeing  how 
much  of  force  and  impressiveness  is  often  gained 
by  the  absence  of  syllables  which  denote  mere 
grammatical  relations  that  are  irrelevant  to  the 
intended  emotional  effect.  In  modern  English 
the  grammar  does  not,  as  it  does  in  purely  in- 
flexional languages,1  obtrude  itself  on  the  atten- 
tion where  it  is  not  wanted. 

While  English  has  thus  the  peculiar  advantage 
of  a  noiseless  grammatical  machinery,  it  has 
another  advantage  of  an  opposite  kind  in  its 
power  of  emphasizing  certain  grammatical  rela- 
tions by  placing  the  sentence-accent  on  the 
auxiliary.  It  is  usually  difficult  to  render  in 

1As  a  somewhat  extreme  instance,  we  may  cite  the  Latin 
duorum  bonorum  virorum,  where  the  main  portions  of  the  words, 
du-,  ton-,  and  vir-,  are  actually  unaccented,  the  stress  falling  on 
the  endings  which  tautologically  express  three  times  over  the 
notion  of  the  genitive  plural. 


78  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

another  language  the  precise  effect  of  the  stressed 
auxiliary  in  such  phrases  as  '  I  did  live  there,' 
or  '  if  he  should  do  such  a  thing.'  The  exten- 
sive use  which  is  made  of  variation  in  sentence- 
accent  for  expressing  distinctions  of  meaning  gives 
a  large  scope  for  that  elliptic  brevity  which  is  so 
striking  a  characteristic  of  spoken  English.  One 
remarkable  example  of  the  national  love  of  con- 
ciseness of  speech  is  our  habit  of  omitting  the 
principal  verb  in  compound  tenses  where  it  can 
be  supplied  by  the  hearer  from  what  has  gone 
before,  as  in  '  Yes,  I  do,'  '  it  certainly  will  not.' 
By  means  of  this  idiom  we  can  under  certain 
circumstances  substitute  a  monosyllable  for  any 
tense  of  any  verb. 

•The  '  making  of  English  grammar '  is  now  pro- 
bably a  finished  process.  While  it  is  certain  that 
the  vocabulary  of  English  will  in  future  undergo 
great  changes — while  many  new  words  will  be 
formed  or  adopted,  and  many  old  words  will 
disappear  or  change  their  meaning — there  is 
reason  for  believing  that  the  grammar  will  re- 
main for  centuries  very  nearly  what  it  is  now. 
The  ground  for  this  belief  lies  partly  in  the 
spread  of  education.  Literary  culture  perhaps  on 
the  whole  conduces  to  tolerance  of  certain  kinds 
of  innovation  in  vocabulary,  but  with  regard  to 


ii.]         THE   MAKING  OF  ENGLISH   GRAMMAR  79 

grammar  its  tendency  is  strongly  conservative. 
Another  reason  is  that  simplification  of  accidence 
has  nearly  attained  its  utmost  conceivable  limit, 
and  that  the  few  further  steps  in  this  direction 
that  remain  possible  would  involve  practical  in- 
convenience. For  instance,  our  irregular  verbs  and 
irregular  plurals  of  nouns  are,  as  we  have  seen, 
for  the  most  part  shorter  or  more  easily  pro- 
nounceable than  the  regular  inflexions  that  might 
be  substituted.  Perhaps  if  the  influence  of  edu- 
cation did  not  stand  in  the  way,  the  language 
might  lose  the  distinctive  s  of  the  third  person 
singular  of  the  present  tense,  which  is  dropped 
in  some  forms  of  vulgar  speech  ;  but  as  things 
are  this  is  very  unlikely  to  happen.  We  can- 
not assert  that  the  evolution  of  new  gramma- 
tical material — for  instance,  of  new  auxiliary  verbs 
— is  altogether  impossible,  but  the  modern  con- 
servative instinct  would  render  the  acceptance  of 
such  novelties  very  difficult.  On  the  whole,  it 
is  probable  that  the  history  of  English  grammar 
will  for  a  very  long  time  have  few  changes  to 
record  later  than  the  nineteenth  century. 


CHAPTER    III. 
WHAT  ENGLISH  OWES  TO  FOREIGN  TONGUES. 

THE  changes  in  grammatical  structure,  which 
were  the  subject  of  the  preceding  chapters,  are 
only  a  part  of  the  changes  by  which  Old  English 
has  been  transformed  into  Modern  English.  The 
changes  in  vocabulary  are  equally  important. 
Although  we  still  use  many  of  the  old  words — 
chiefly,  it  is  true,  very  much  altered  in  pronun- 
ciation and  spelling — yet  a  very  considerable 
proportion  of  them  have  become  obsolete  ;  and 
many  thousands  of  new  words  have  been  intro- 
duced. Of  those  new  words  which  have  been 
formed  in  English  itself  we  shall  have  to  speak 
later  ;  in  the  present  chapter  we  shall  treat  of 
those  which  have  been  adopted  from  foreign 
languages. 

The  adoption  of  foreign  words  into  the  English 
language  began  before  the  English  came  to  this 


[in.]  WHAT  ENGLISH  OWES  TO  FOREIGN  TONGUES  81 

island.  The  Germanic  people,  of  which  the 
Angles  and  Saxons  formed  part,  had-  long  before 
this  event  been  in  contact  with  the  civilization 
of  Rome  ;  and  several  Latin  words,  denoting 
objects  belonging  to  that  civilization,  or  foreign 
articles  of  use  or  luxury,  had  already  found  their 
way  into  the  language  of  all  or  many  of  the 
Germanic  nations.  The  Latin  strata,  a  paved 
road,  survives  in  English  as  street,  and  in  Ger- 
man as  Strasse.  Other  words  of  Latin  origin, 
which  were  learnt  by  the  English  people  while 
still  dwelling  on  the  continent,  and  which  remain 
in  the  modern  language,  are  wine,  butter,  pepper, 
cheese,  silk,  alum,  pound,  inch,  mile,  mint  (from 
Latin  moneta,  money). 

When  the  English  were  settled  in  Britain, 
they  learned  a  few  more  Latin  words  from  the 
Romanized  people  of  the  towns.  The  Latin 
castra,  for  instance,  became,  under  the  form 
ceaster,  the  Old  English  word  for  a  Roman 
fortified  town,  and  it  survives  in  the  place-name 
Chester,  and  in  the  ending  of  many  other  names 
such  as  Winchester,  Doncaster,  Leicester,  and 
Exeter. 

In  the  sixth  and  seventh  centuries,  the  people 
of  England  were  converted  to  Roman  Christianity, 
and  one  of  the  results  of  their  conversion  was  that 

F 


82  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

they  adopted  a  considerable  number  of  Latin 
words,  chiefly  signifying  things  connected  with 
religion  or  the  services  of  the  church.  Among 
those  which  are  still  part  of  the  language  are 
bishop,  candle,  creed,  font,  mass,  monk,  priest. 
Altogether,  there  have  been  counted  about  four 
hundred  Latin  words  which  had  become  English 
before  the  Norman  Conquest ;  but  many  of  these 
were  not  at  all  in  common  use,  and  only  a  few 
of  them  survive  in  modern  English. 

It  might,  perhaps,  be  naturally  expected  that 
Old  English  would  contain  many  words  taken 
from  the  language  of  the  Celtic  Britons.  The 
older  books  on  English  philology  contain  a  long 
list  of  words  supposed  to  be  derived  from  this 
source.  Modern  investigation,  however,  has  shown 
that  the  number  of  Celtic  words  which  are  found 
in  English  before  the  twelfth  century  is  less  than 
a  dozen ;  and  of  these  several  (such  as  dry,  a 
wizard,  the  same  word  as  druid,  bratt,  a  cloak, 
luh,  an  arm  of  the  sea,  a  lougJi)  appear  from  their 
form  to  have  been  learnt  not  from  the  Britons, 
but  from  the  Irishmen  who  accompanied  the 
missionaries  from  lona  to  Northumbria ;  while 
dun,  a  hill,  a  '  down,'  though  of  Celtic  origin,  was 
probably  brought  by  the  English  from  the  con- 
tinent. Perhaps  binn,  a  manger,  and  dunn,  dun 


in.]  WHAT  ENGLISH  OWES  TO  FOREIGN  TONGUES  83 

(-coloured)  and  one  or  two  more  words,  may  really 
have  been  adopted  from  the  British  language,  but 
these  are  all  the  Old  English  words  for  which 
this  origin  is  at  all  probable.  It  must  be  con- 
fessed that  this  result  is  somewhat  puzzling,  as 
there  is  evidence  to  prove  that  the  British 
population  was  not  entirely  massacred  or  driven 
westward  by  the  English  conquerors.  The  phys- 
ical characteristics  of  modern  Englishmen  in 
many  parts  of  the  country  show  that  they  must 
be  partly  descended  from  the  pre-English  in- 
habitants ;  and  in  Old  English  writings  wealh, 
Welshman,  was  one  of  the  ordinary  words  for 
'  slave.'  It  must  be  remarked,  also,  that  the 
British  names  of  rivers  and  of  cities  have  in  many 
cases  been  preserved  to  modern  times.  Still, 
however  surprising  the  fact  may  be,  it  remains 
certain  that  the  English  language  owes  practically 
nothing  to  the  language  of  the  ancient  Britons. 

To  the  Danes  and  Northmen  the  English 
vocabulary  owes  a  great  deal.  If  we  did  not 
otherwise  know  that  England  had  once  been 
under  Scandinavian  rule,  we  might  have  inferred 
the  fact  from  the  presence  in  our  language  of 
many  Danish  words  with  what  may  be  called 
political  meanings,  such  as  law,  outlaw,  grith 
(legal  security),  hustings,  wapentake,  riding  (in 


84  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

'  the  three  Ridings  of  Yorkshire ' — the  Old  Norse 
thritkjtingr,  third  part).  The  Old  English  word 
eorl  (earl),  which  originally  meant  merely  a  man 
of  noble  birth,  came  to  be  used  in  its  Scandi- 
navian sense  of  ruler  of  a  district.  Other  words 
of  Scandinavian  origin  are  awe,  call,  crave,  fellow, 
get,  hit,  husband,  knife,  leg,  loft,  loose,  low,  odd, 
root,  same,  scant,  skin,  scrip,  take,  Thursday,  thrall, 
want,  wrong.  The  word  cross  of  course  comes 
ultimately  from  Latin,  but  its  form  is  due  to  the 
Northmen,  who  had  learnt  it  from  the  Christians 
of  Ireland.  Some  of  our  common  words,  which 
existed  in  Old  English,  have  been  assimilated  to 
the  kindred  Scandinavian  synonyms  :  thus  sister 
descends  not  from  the  Old  English  sweostor,  but 
from  the  Old  Norse  syster  ;  and  the  Middle 
English  yive  or  yeve  (which  regularly  repre- 
sented the  Old  English  gifan^}  has  been  super- 
seded by  the  form  give  (Old  Norse,  gifa).  In 
the  dialects  of  the  North  of  England,  of  East 
Anglia,  and  of  some  of  the  midland  counties, 
there  are  scores  of  words  of  Danish  origin. 

We  have  now  seen  how  far  the  English  lan- 
guage had  been    enriched   from    foreign  tongues 

1  The  Old  English  g  before  i  and  e  was  pronounced  as  y,  and 
is  represented  by  y  in  Modern  English. 


in.]  WHAT  ENGLISH  OWES  TO  FOREIGN  TONGUES  85 

before  the  end  of  the  eleventh  century.  After  all, 
the  amount  of  what  it  had  gained  in  this  way  was 
not  very  great  in  comparison  with  the  whole 
extent  of  its  vocabulary.  With  all  the  Latin, 
Celtic,  and  Scandinavian  words  that  it  had  ac- 
quired, the  general  character  of  the  language  in 
noo  was  essentially  what  it  had  been  five 
centuries  before. 

The  new  conditions  brought  about  by  the 
Norman  Conquest,  however,  opened  the  door  for 
a  far  more  abundant  influx  of  foreign  words.  It 
was  not  only  that  the  tongue  of  the  new  rulers,  as 
we  have  already  seen,  came  to  be  used  by  large 
numbers  of  Englishmen  in  the  intercourse  of  daily 
life,  so  that  much  of  its  colloquial  vocabulary  was 
adopted  into  the  native  language..  The  know- 
ledge of  French  gave  access  to  the  rich  literature 
of  the  continent ;  from  the  thirteenth  to  the 
fifteenth  century  a  large  portion  of  the  literature 
of  England  consisted  of  translations  of  French 
romance,  and  the  native  poetry  was  powerfully 
influenced  by  French  models.  Under  these 
circumstances  it  was  natural  that  the  English 
literary  dialect  should  receive  a  large  accession 
of  French  words,  many  of  which  gradually 
found  their  way  into  the  vocabulary  of  familiar 
speech. 


86  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

There  was  yet  another  way  in  which  the 
Norman  Conquest  contributed  to  the  transforma- 
tion of  English  from  a  purely  Germanic  language 
to  one  with  a  mixed  vocabulary.  The  higher 
literary  culture  of  the  foreign  clergy,  who  under 
Norman  and  Angevin  rule  were  introduced  into 
the  English  monasteries,  soon  made  itself  felt  in 
the  extended  use  of  Latin  for  works  of  history 
and  theology.  In  process  of  time  many  Latin 
chronicles  and  books  of  devotion  were  translated 
into  English,  and  the  translators,  writing  for 
readers  who  were  not  altogether  without  learning 
often  found  it  easier  to  adopt  words  from  the 
learned  language  than  to  render  them  by  native 
equivalents. 

It  is  important  to  understand  that  the  French 
words  which  were  brought  into  English  represent 
two  different  dialects.  The  form  of  the  French 
language  which  obtained  currency  in  England  as 
the  immediate  consequence  of  the  Norman  Con- 
quest was  the  northern  dialect — the  speech  of 
Normandy  and  Picardy.  But  with  the  accession 
of  the  Angevin  dynasty  in  the  middle  of  the 
twelfth  century  the  dialect  of  Central  France 
became  the  language  of  the  court  and  of  fashion- 
able society.  The  two  dialects  differed  consider- 
ably in  pronunciation  :  for  instance,  Northern 


m.]  WHAT  ENGLISH  OWES  TO  FOREIGN  TONGUES  87 

French  had  k  where  Central  French  had  ch,  and 
ch  where  Central  French  had  s ;  •  in  words  of 
Germanic  and  Celtic  etymology  the  original  w 
remained  unaltered,  while  in  Central  French  it 
became  gu,  and  ultimately^;  and  in  many  words 
where  Northern  French  had  g  the  Central  dialect 
changed  it  into  j.  One  consequence  of  the  two- 
fold character  of  the  French  spoken  in  England 
was  that  very  often  one  and  the  same  French 
word  was  adopted  into  English  twice  over,  in  two 
different  forms  and  with  meanings  more  or  less 
different.  Thus  we  have  in  modern  English  the 
words  catch,  warden,  launch,  wage,  which  came 
from  Norman  French,  and  alongside  them  we 
have  chase,  guardian,  lance,  gage,  which  represent 
the  same  wcrds  as  pronounced  in  the  French 
dialect  afterwards  introduced.  In  this  way  the 
dialectal  diversities  in  the  language  of  the  con- 
querors have  contributed  to  increase  the  copious- 
ness of  the  English  vocabulary.  There  are  a  few 
cases  in  which  a  word  was  at  first  made  English  in 
its  Norman  form,  and  afterwards  assimilated  to  the 
pronunciation  of  Central  French  :  thus  '  charity ' 
was  cariteth  in  the  English  of  about  1150,  but  a 
century  later  it  appears  as  charitee.  It  may  be 
mentioned  as  a  curious  fact,  that  while  the 
spelling  gaol  is  derived  from  Northern  French, 


$8  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

the  word  is  always  pronounced,  and  sometimes 
written  (jaif)  with  the  j  which  is  a  mark  of  the 
Central  dialect. 

It  is  interesting  and  instructive  to  observe  what 
kinds  of  objects  or  ideas  are  chiefly  denoted  by 
the  words  that  came  in  from  French  during 
the  two  centuries  that  followed  the  Conquest. 
Readers  of  Ivanhoe  will  remember  the  acute 
remark  which  Scott  puts  into  the  mouth  of 
Wamba  the  jester,  that  while  the  living  animals 
— OX)  sheep)  calf,  swine,  deer — continued  to  bear 
their  native  names,  the  flesh  of  those  animals  as 
used  for  food  was  denoted  by  French  words, 
beef)  mutton )  veal,  pork,  bacon,  venison.  The  point 
of  the  thing  is,  of  course,  that  the  '  Saxon '  serf 
had^the  care  of  the  animals  when  alive,  but  when 
killed  they  were  eaten  by  his  '  French '  superiors. 
We  may  perhaps  find  a  similar  significance 
in  the  French  origin  of  master,  servant,  butler, 
buttery,  bottle,  dinner,  supper,  banquet.  It  is  only 
what  we  should  have  expected  that  we  find 
French  words  abundant  among  our  terms  relating 
to  law,  government,  and  property.  Examples  are 
court,  assize,  judge,  jury,  justice,  prison,  gaol,  par- 
liament, bill,  act,  council,  tax,  custom,  royal,  prince, 
county,  city,  mayor,  manor,  chattel,  money,  rent,  all 
words  that  came  in  before  the  end  of  the  thirteenth 


in.]  WHAT  ENGLISH  OWES  TO  FOREIGN  TONGUES  89 

century.  The  system  of  gradation  of  titular  rank 
was  of  continental  origin,  and  the  individual  titles 
are  mostly  French,  as  duke,  marquis,  viscount, 
baron.  There  is  one  notable  exception  ;  the 
foreign  count  (Old  French  conte)  was  not  adopted, 
because  the  native  earl  had  come  to  have  nearly 
the  same  meaning ;  but  it  had  not  been  the 
English  custom  to  give  to  ladies  titles  corre- 
sponding to  those  of  their  lords,  and  hence  for 
the  wife  of  an  earl  the  French  title  countess  had 
to  be  used.  The  Old  English  word  cniht 
(knight)  kept  its  place,  possibly  because  it  was 
shorter  than  the  French  synonym  chevalier. 

It  was  natural,  too,  that  many  of  the  terms 
relating  to  military  matters  should  be  adopted 
from  the  tongue  of  the  conquerors.  War  itself 
is  a  Norman  French  word,  and  among  the  other 
French  words  belonging  to  the  same  department 
which  became  English  before  the  end  of  the 
thirteenth  century  are  battle,  assault,  siege,  standard, 
banner,  gonfanon,  arms,  armour,  harness,  glaive, 
lance,  arbalest,  hauberk,  mangonel,  fortress,  tower. 

In  industrial  civilization  the  French-speaking 
strangers  were  no  doubt  greatly  superior  to  the 
native  population,  and  it  is  probably  for  this 
reason  that  nearly  all  the  commonest  designations 
of  classes  of  tradesmen  and  artisans  are  of  French 


90  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

origin.  The  smith,  the  baker,  the  skinner,  and  a 
few  more,  kept  their  Old  English  titles  ;  but  the 
butcher,  the  barber,  the  chandler,  the  carpenter, 
the  cutler,  the  draper,  the  grocer,  the  mason,  the 
tailor,  are  all  called  by  French  names.  The 
shoemaker  is  an  exception,  but  there  was  a  time 
when  he  preferred  to  call  himself  a  cordwainer  or 
a  corviser. 

It  is  curious  to  note  that  all  the  current  terms 
of  family  relationship  outside  the  immediate  circle 
of  the  household  have  been  adopted  from  French. 
Uncle,  aunt,  nephew,  niece,  and  cousin,  very  soon 
displaced  their  native  equivalents.  Grandsire  and 
Grandame,  which  appear  in  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury, are  words  taken  directly  from  the  French 
spoken  in  England.  They  do  not  appear  to 
have  been  used  on  the  Continent ;  and  indeed 
the  substitution  of  the  respectful  titles  sire  (the 
same  word  as  sir)  and  dame  for  '  father '  and 
'  mother '  appears  to  have  been  peculiar  to  the 
French  of  England.  In  the  fifteenth  century  the 
half-English  grandfather  and  grandmother  came 
into  use ;  but  it  was  not  until  the  Elizabethan 
times  that  the  use  of  the  prefix  was  extended 
(in  a  manner  unknown  to  French)  by  the  forma- 
tion of  words  like  grandson  and  granddaughter. 
Father-in-law,  mother-in-law,  etc.,  are  formed  of 


in.]  WHAT  ENGLISH  OWES  TO  FOREIGN  TONGUES  91 

English  elements,  but  they  are  literal  translations 
of  Old  French  designations.  The  words  sire  and 
dame  (now  dam\  which,  as  we  have  just  seen, 
were  originally  applied  to  parents  as  terms  of 
respect,  have  suffered  a  strange  descent  in  dignity 
of  use,  being  now  employed  (except  for  the  poetic 
use  of  sire]  only  with  reference  to  animals. 

The  only  definite  class  of  objects  for  which 
the  native  names  have  remained  without  any 
French  mixture  (so  far  as  colloquial  use  is  con- 
cerned) is  that  consisting  of  the  external  parts 
of  the  body.  Even  here  there  is  one  noteworthy 
exception.  The  French  word  face,  which  first 
appears  as  English  late  in  the  thirteenth  century, 
found  admission  into  the  vocabulary  of  familiar 
speech,  perhaps  all  the  more  readily  because  it 
was  shorter  or  more  easily  pronounced  than  the 
native  synonyms,  onlete,  onsene,  and  wlite. 

The  literary,  as  distinguished  from  the  col- 
loquial, adoption  of  French  words,  began  in  the 
twelfth  century,  and  has  continued  down  to  the 
present  time.  The  English  writers  of  the  thir- 
teenth and  fourteenth  centuries  were  able  to 
assume  on  the  part  of  their  readers  at  least  a 
moderate  acquaintance  with  literary  French. 
Hence  they  felt  themselves  at  liberty  to  introduce 
a  French  word  whenever  they  pleased.  The 


92  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

poets  availed  themselves  of  this  liberty  very 
freely ;  it  was  an  easy  resource  for  meeting  the 
necessities  of  rhyme  and  metre,  and  especially 
the  very  exacting  demands  of  the  laws  of 
alliterative  verse.  The  innumerable  words  brought 
into  the  language  in  this  way  are  naturally  of 
the  most  varied  character  with  regard  to  meaning. 
Many  of  them,  which  supplied  no  permanent 
need  of  the  language,  have  long  been  obsolete, 
but  the  greater  number  still  survive.  The  French 
importations  by  prose  writers  during  this  period 
are  less  abundant,  and  consist  largely  of  terms 
of  science  and  theology,  in  which  the  native 
language  was  poor. 

The  French  literary  vocabulary,  from  an  early 
period,  contained  a  very  large  proportion  of 
learned  words  taken  from  Latin,  with  the  endings 
dropped  or  altered  in  accordance  with  the  habits 
of  French  pronunciation.  Words  of  this  kind, 
when  adopted  into  English,  served  as  a  pattern 
after  which  Latin  words  could  be  anglicized. 
An  English  writer  who  introduced  a  Latin  word 
into  his  composition  usually  gave  it  the  same 
form  in  which  it  would  have  been  adopted  into 
French.  It  is  therefore  often  difficult  or  im- 
possible to  determine  whether  an  English  word 
of  Latin  origin  came  into  English  immediately 


in.]  WHAT  ENGLISH  OWES  TO  FOREIGN  TONGUES  93 

from  Latin  or  through  the  medium  of  French. 
Even  when  we  have  proved  that  the  word  was 
used  earlier  in  French  than  in  English,  the 
question  is  not  settled,  because  it  may  have 
been  independently  borrowed  in  the  two  lan- 
guages ;  indeed,  it  is  certain  that  this  often  did 
happen. 

The  custom  of  adopting  Latin  words  at  second- 
hand— through  French — paved  the  way  to  the 
extensive  introduction  of  words  directly  from 
Latin.  This  is  the  reason  why  the  Latin 
element  is  so  very  much  larger  in  the  English 
vocabulary  than  in  that  of  any  other  Germanic 
language — German,  Dutch,  or  Scandinavian. 
Germany  and.  Holland  have  certainly  not  been 
less,  but  probably  much  more,  devoted  to  classical 
scholarship  than  England  has ;  but  their  lan- 
guages were  not,  in  their  middle  stages,  saturated 
with  French  loan-words,  and  consequently  they 
were  led  to  find  expression  for  new  ideas  by 
development  of  their  native  resources,  instead  of 
drawing  on  the  stores  of  the  Latin  vocabulary. 

The  Latin  element  in  modern  English  is  so 
great  that  there  would  be  no  difficulty  in  writing 
hundreds  of  consecutive  pages  in  which  the  pro- 
portion of  words  of  native  English  and  French 
etymology,  excluding  particles,  pronouns,  and 


94  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

auxiliary  and  substantive  verbs,  would  not  exceed 
five  per  cent,  of  the  whole.1  What  would  be  the 
result  of  an  etymological  census  of  all  the  words 
in  a  complete  modern  dictionary  it  is  impossible 
to  say,  because  the  laborious  and  unprofitable  task 
has  never  been  performed  ;  but  it  is  probable 
that,^  if  compounds  and  derivatives  of  English 
formation  were  left  out  of  account,  the  words 
taken  from  Latin  would  far  outnumber  those 
from  all  other  sources.  And  the  Latin  portion 
of  the  vocabulary  is  still  constantly  receiving 
additions.  The  greater  part  of  modern  English 
literature  has  been  written  by  men  who  were 
classically  educated,  and  for  readers  who  were 
presumed  to  have  more  or  less  knowledge  of 
Latin.  Probably  there  are  very  few  of  our 
scholarly  writers  who  are  not  responsible  for  the 
introduction  of  some  new  word  of  Latin  deri- 
vation. It  has  come  to  be  felt  that  the  whole 
Latin  vocabulary,  or  at  least  that  portion  of  it 
which  is  represented  in  familiar  classical  passages, 
is  potentially  English,  and  when  a  new  word  is 
wanted  it  is  often  easier,  and  more  in  accord- 

1  In  this  statement  it  is  assumed  that  all  the  words  of  Latin 
origin  which  conform  to  the  accepted  rules  for  anglicizing  Latin 
words  are  to  be  counted  as  Latin  and  not  as  French,  even 
though  as  a  matter  of  history  they  may  have  been  adopted 
through  French, 


in.]  WHAT  ENGLISH  OWES  TO  FOREIGN  TONGUES  95 

ance  with  our  literary  habits,  to  anglicize  a 
Latin  word,  or  to  form  a  compound  from  Latin 
elements,  than  to  invent  a  native  English  com- 
pound or  derivative  which  will  answer  the  pur- 
pose. So  much  is  this  the  case,  that  probably 
the  authors  of  many  of  these  coinages  would  be 
greatly  surprised  to  learn  that  the  words  had 
never  been  used  before,  or  even  that  they  were 
not  to  be  found  in  the  ordinary  dictionaries. 
And  the  classically-educated  reader,  when  he 
meets  with  a  word  of  Latin  etymology  which 
he  at  once  recognises  as  a  good  and  useful  ex- 
pression of  a  certain  meaning,  does  not  ordin- 
arily note  that  he  has  not  been  accustomed  to 
meet  with  it  in  English.  Our  literary  vocabu- 
lary abounds  with  words  which  owe  their  mental 
effect  not  to  any  English  traditions,  but  to  the 
reader's  knowledge  of  the  Latin  etymology. 
Sometimes,  even,  a  word  depends  for  its 
precise  force  on  its  suggestion  of  a  particular 
classical  passage.  For  example  the  adjective 
esurient,  which  literally  means  only  '  hungry,'  is 
often  used  with  an  implication  which  is  intel- 
ligible only  to  readers  who  remember  the 
Graeculus  esuriens  of  Juvenal — the  '  hungry 
Greekling'  who  will  shrink  from  no  task  that 
will  bring  him  a  little  money. 


96  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

i  The  English  method  of  adopting  Latin  words  is 
in  some  respects  peculiar.  While  in  French,  as 
a  general  rule,  Latin  adjectives  are  adopted  by 
simply  dropping  the  inflexional  ending  of  the 
accusative,  there  is  in  English  a  curious  aversion 
to  doing  this  except  in  the  case  of  words  having 
distinctly  adjectival  endings.  In  other  cases  we 
ordinarily  append  a  suffix,  ultimately  of  Latin 
origin,  either  -ous,  -al,  or  -an.  This  practice 
began  -in  French,  but  in  English  it  has  been  ex- 
tended much  farther.  The  Latin  continuum, 
caelestem,  erroneum,  which  in  French  have  become 
continu,  celeste,  errant,  are  in  English  continuous, 
celestial,  erroneous ;  the  Latin  veracent  becomes 
veracious  (not  verace] ;  and  caeruleus  becomes 
cerulean.  A  Latin  adjective  anglicized,  as  sub- 
stantives usually  are,  by  merely  leaving  out  the 
ending,  would  strike  every  one  as  un-English, 
unless  it  had  one  of  the  familiar  endings  of 
adjectives.  In  the  anglicizing  of  Latin  verbs,  one 
usual  mode  is  that  of  dropping  the  inflexions 
of  the  present  indicative ;  but  where  the  verb 
has  a  short  root  syllable  this  mostly  results  in 
the  production  of  forms  which  somehow  are  felt 
to  be  unsatisfactory.  If  the  verb  dlvido  had  not 
become  English  at  an  early  period,  no  one  would 
now  think  of  adopting  it  in  the  form  divide.  In 


III.]  WHAT  ENGLISH  OWES  TO  FOREIGN  TONGUES  97 

many  instances  of  this  kind  we  can  fall  back 
on  the  old  practice  of  forming  the-  English  verb 
from  the  passive  participle,  as  in  revise,  direct, 
inspect,  meditate,  expedite ;  but  where  the  participle 
happens  to  end  in  -ttus  this  resource  is  not  in 
accordance  with  modern  custom.  Hence  the 
general  statement  that  any  Latin  word  may 
be  adopted  into  English  if  it  supplies  a  want  is 
in  practice  limited  by  the  fact  that  there  are 
many  verbs  (such  as  destyio,  for  instance)  which 
do  not  admit  of  being  anglicized  according  to 
the  recognised  methods. 

The  revival  of  Greek  learning  in  Western 
Europe,  the  effects  of  which  began  to  be  felt  in 
this  country  soon  after  the  commencement  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  opened  up  a  new  source  from 
which  the  English  vocabulary  could  be  enriched. 
Long  before  this  time  the  language  contained  a 
certain  number  of  Greek  words,  such  as  geography, 
theology,  logic,  which  had  come  in  through  the 
medium  of  Latin.  In  most  cases  the  immediate 
source  was  French  ;  and  nearly  all  these  latinized 
Greek  words  had  been  adopted  into  all  the  liter- 
ary languages  of  Europe.  In  the  sixteenth  and 
to  a  great  extent  in  the  seventeenth  century  Latin 
was  still  the  ordinary  vehicle  of  the  literature  of 


98  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

science  and  philosophy,  and  the  new  technical 
terms  of  Greek  etymology  were  generally 
used  in  modern  Latin  before  they  found  their 
way  into  the  vernacular  tongues.  It  therefore 
became  a  general  European  convention  that  when 
a  new  word  was  adopted  from  Greek  into  English 
or  any  other  modern  language,  it  must  be  treated 
as  if  it  had  passed  through  a  Latin  channel.  The 
Greek  k,  aiy  ei,  oi,  ou,  u,  were  transliterated,  after 
Latin  example,  by  c,  IB,  i,  a>,  u,y,  and  the  aspirated 
initial  r  by  rh.  In  the  main,  these  rules  are  still 
adhered  to,  though  there  are  some  exceptions 
among  modern  scientific  words.  'Greek  adjectives, 
it  may  be  remarked,  are  usually  anglicized,  like 
Latin  adjectives,  by  the  addition  of  the  suffix  -ous, 
-an^or  -al:  thus  autonomos,  diaphancs,  are  repre- 
sented by  autonomous,  diaphanous. 

Although  the  study  of  Greek  has  been  for  cen- 
turies an  essential  part  of  the  higher  education  of 
Englishmen,  the  language  would  not  have  contri- 
buted very  greatly  to  the  English  vocabulary,  if 
it  had  not  happened  to  be  peculiarly  well  fitted 
to  supply  the  need  for  precise  technical  terms  of 
science.  It  possesses  an  unlimited  power  of  form- 
ing compound  words,  and  it  has  also  a  singularly 
complete  and  regular  system  of  suffixes,  by  means 
of  which  a  whole  group  of  derivatives  of  obvious 


in.]  WHAT  ENGLISH  OWES  TO  FOREIGN  TONGUES  99 

and  precise  meaning  can  be  produced  from  any 
verb  or  noun.  Thus  the  verb  zeteo,  I  inquire, 
has  the  derivatives,  zetema,  an  object  of  inquiry, 
zetesis,  the  process  of  inquiry,  zetetes,  an  inquirer, 
zetetikos,  able  or  disposed  to  inquire ;  and  the 
meaning  of  all  these  words  is  obvious  when 
that  of  the  primary  verb  is  known.  In  the 
hands  of  the  long  succession  of  thinkers  which 
culminated  in  Plato  and  Aristotle,  the  capacities 
of  the  language  for  the  expression  of  accurate 
distinctions  had  been  cultivated  to  the  highest 
point.  In  all  the  departments  of  science  that 
were  known  to  the  ancient  world,  the  Greek 
technical  vocabulary  is  marvellous  in  its  lucidity 
and  precision.  It  is  therefore  not  wonderful  that 
the  greater  part  of  it  has  been  adopted  into  all 
the  modern  European  languages.  So  well  adapted 
is  the  structure  of  the  Greek  language  for  the 
formation  of  scientific  terms,  that  when  a  word 
is  wanted  to  denote  some  conception  peculiar  to 
modern  science,  the  most  convenient  way  of 
obtaining  it  usually  is  to  frame  a  new  Greek 
compound  or  derivative,  such  as  Aristotle  himself 
might  have  framed  if  he  had  found  it  needful  to 
express  the  meaning. 

The    wonderful    development    of   the   physical 
sciences   during  the  last  two  hundred  years  has 


ioo  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

created  a  necessity  for  the  invention  of  a  multi- 
tude of  new  terms  ;  and  hence  an  etymological 
census  of  the  words  in  our  recent  large  dictionaries 
would  show  a  surprisingly1  great  proportion  of 
Greek  derivatives — a  proportion  which  is  con- 
stantly increasing.  In  addition  to  the  scientific 
terms  the  recently-coined  words  of  Greek  ety- 
mology include  many  names  of  processes  or 
instruments  of  modern  invention,  such  as  photo- 
graphy',  lithography,  ophthalmoscope,  stereotype,  tele- 
phone, cinematograph.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  the 
modern  scientific  and  technical  words  from  this 
source  are  mostly  of  international  currency.  The 
custom  of  forming  compounds  from  Greek  ele- 
ments prevails  in  all  civilized  countries  of  Europe 
and  ^America,  and  if  a  useful  term  of  this  kind 
is  introduced  in  any  one  country — whether  in 
England,  France,  Germany,  Holland,  Italy,  or 
Spain — it  is  usually  adopted  with  great  prompti- 
tude into  the  languages  of  all  the  rest. 

Nearly  all  the  words  that  English  owes  to  the 
Greek  language,  indirectly  as  well  as  directly,  were 
originally  scientific  or  technical,  though  many  of 
those  of  older  date  (adopted  through  mediaeval 

1  At  least  if  our  anticipations  are  based  on  knowledge  of  the 
etymological  composition  of  the  vocabulary  of  every-day  speech, 
or  even  of  that  of  ordinary  literature. 


in.]  WHAT  ENGLISH  OWES  TO  FOREIGN  TONGUES  101 

Latin  and  French),  such  as  fancy,  idea,  ecstasy, 
pathos,  sympathy,  have  long  taken  their  place  in 
the  popular  vocabulary.  Now  and  then,  though 
not  very  often,  a  Greek  word  of  other  than  tech- 
nical character  is  employed  in  anglicized  form  in 
order  to  evoke  in  the  reader's  mind  a  recollection 
of  its  use  by  some  classic  author.  The  use  of 
such  a  word  as  apolaustic,  for  example,  implies 
that  the  writer  who  uses  it  is  addressing  readers 
who  are  able  to  understand  an  allusion  to  the 
Ethics  of  Aristotle.  There  are,  too,  a  few  Greek 
words,  such  as  kudos,  nous,  hubris,  which  have 
been  adopted,  without  the  customary  latinization 
of  form,  in  university  slang,  and  have  thence 
acquired  a  certain  degree  of  general  currency. 

During  the  four  centuries  that  have  elapsed 
since  1500,  the  intercourse  between  England  and 
the  remoter  nations  of  Europe  has  become  more 
extensive  and  intimate  than  in  earlier  times,  and 
the  literatures  of  those  nations,  made  accessible 
through  the  printing  press,  have  come  to  be 
studied  in  this  country.  At  the  same  time,  the 
progress  of  discovery  and  colonization,  in  which 
England  has  borne  so  great  a  part,  has  made 
known  to  our  countrymen  the  languages,  customs, 
and  products  of  the  most  distant  regions  of  the 


102  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

earth.  Hence  it  has  come  to  pass  that  the 
modern  English  vocabulary  includes  words  derived 
from  every  civilized  language  of  Europe,  and  from 
innumerable  languages  of  Asia,  Africa,  America, 
and  Australia. 

A  great  deal  of  history  is  enshrined  in  the 
many,  words  that  English  has  adopted  from  other 
tongues.  The  presence  in  our  dictionaries  of 
such  terms  as  aria,  basso,  cantabile,  da  capo, 
fantasia,  finale,  gamut,  intermezzo,  legato,  maestoso, 
oboe,  opera, piano, pizzicato  prima  donna,  rallentando, 
staccato,  tremolo,  and  aquatinta,  busto,  chiaroscuro, 
dado,  facciata,  fresco,  graffito,  impasto,  intaglio, 
mezzotint,  morbidezza,  ovolo,  rilievo,  replica,  studio, 
terra  cotta  (to  mention  only  a  few  out  of  many) 
would  be  sufficient  to  inform  us,  if  we  did  not 
know  already,  that  the  Italians  have  been  our 
teachers  in  music  and  the  fine  arts.  Less  generally 
known  are  the  obligations  of  English  artistic 
culture  to  the  Netherlands,  which  are  shown  by 
such  words  as  landscape,  sketch,  easel,  and  maul- 
stick. That  the  Dutch  were  once  our  masters  in 
nautical  matters  may  be  learned  from  the  terms 
aloof,  avast,  boom,  dock,  hull,  skipper,  orlop,  flyboat, 
euphroe,  rover,  and  many  others.  There  was  a 
period  when  the  '  Englishman  Italianate,'  whom 
Ascham  so  much  detested,  was  a  personage  very 


in.]  WHAT  ENGLISH  OWES  TO  FOREIGN  TONGUES  103 

commonly  met  with,  and  when  Italy  set  the 
fashion  for  England  in  literary  taste  as  well  as  in 
dress  and  social  customs ;  there  was  another 
period  in  which  the  Spaniards  Gongora  and 
Guevara  were  looked  on  as  the  writers  most 
deserving  of  admiring  imitation.  It  is  therefore 
not  wonderful  that  the  English  of  the  books 
written  during  these  periods  contains  many  words 
adopted  from  Italian  and  Spanish.  Some  of  these 
did  not  take  root  in  the  language,  but  others  are 
still  in  current  use,  as  attitude,  cicerone,  fiasco, 
influenza,  isolate,  motto,  stanza,  umbrella,  from 
Italian,  and  ambuscade,  desperado,  disembogue,  dis- 
patch, grandee,  negro,  peccadillo,  punctilio,  renegade, 
from  Spanish.  Amongst  the  very  few  words  that 
English  owes  to  High  German  are  bismuth,  blende, 
cobalt,  gneiss,  greywacke,  quartz,  shale,  zinc,  which 
remind  us  that  it  was  in  Germany  that  mineralogy 
first  attained  the  rank  of  a  science. 

The  English  words  taken  from  the  other  lan- 
guages of  Europe,  and  from  languages  of  more 
distant  parts  of  the  world,  are  chiefly  names  of 
foreign  products,  or  terms  connected  with  the 
customs  of  foreign  peoples.  From  Portuguese  we 
have  auto-da-fe,  albatross,  cocoa,  dodo,  verandah ; 
from  modern  Greek,  valonia ;  from  Russian, 
drosky,  knout,  verst,  steppe  \  from  Turkish,  caftan, 


104  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

coffee,  effendi,  horde ;  from  modern  Scandinavian 
tongues,  eider,  geysir,  kraken,  sloyd,  tungsten.  The 
many  languages  of  our  Indian  Empire  are  abun- 
dantly represented  in  our  English  dictionaries. 
The  number  of  Malay  words  in  English  is  sur- 
prisingly large,  and  though  most  of  them  are 
probably  known  to  few  people,  the  list  includes 
the  Tamiliar  gingham,  gong,  gutta-percha,  lory, 
orang-outan,  amuck,  ketchup.  China  has  given  us 
tea,  and  the  names  of  the  various  kinds  of  tea  ;  a 
good  many  other  Chinese  words  figure  in  our 
larger  dictionaries,  though  they  cannot  be  said  to 
have  become  really  English.  From  Japan,  besides 
the  terms  relating  to  the  art  and  the  institutions 
of  that  country,  we  have  rickshaw,  which  seems 
likely  to  become  naturalized  in  -an  application  un- 
known in  its  native  land.  The  Polynesian  dialects 
yield  two  words  that  are  in  everyday  use,  taboo 
and  tattoo.  The  languages  of  the  New  World 
have  contributed  some  hundreds  of  words  ;  and 
although  many  of  these,  such  as  squaw  and  wig- 
wam, are  used  only  in  speaking  of  the  peoples  to 
whose  tongues  they  belong,  there  are  not  a  few 
(e.g.  tobacco,  potato,  toboggan,  moccasin,  pemmicari) 
which  we  never  think  of  regarding  as  foreign. 

The    increase    of   the    English    vocabulary    by 
additions     from     foreign     sources     has     been     so 


in.]  WHAT  ENGLISH  OWES  TO  FOREIGN  TONGUES  105 

enormous  that  the  words  of  native  etymology 
bear  a  very  small  proportion  to  the  whole 
number  of  words  given  in  our  modern  dictionaries. 
It  is  true  that  not  a  quarter  of  the  words  in  the 
dictionaries  are  really  familiar  to  the  mass  of 
well-educated  readers.  But  even  if  we  take  the 
actual  vocabulary  of  modern  novels  or  newspaper 
articles,  it  still  remains  true  that  the  words  of 
Old  English  origin  are  far  outnumbered  by  those 
derived  from  other  tongues. 

It  has  often  been  contended  that  the  influx 
of  foreign  words  into  English  has  enfeebled 
instead  of  strengthening  the  language,  and  that 
it  would  have  been  better  if,  instead  of  taking 
over  words  from  French  and  Latin,  our  country- 
men had,  like  the  Germans,  supplied  the 
need  for  new  words  by  forming  compounds  and 
derivatives  from  the  words  belonging  to  the 
native  stock.  The  advocates  of  this  view 
have,  no  doubt,  some  facts  on  their  side.  It  is 
a  real  defect  in  English  that  such  words  as 
mind  and  mental,  eye  and  ocular,  sun  and  solar, 
moon  and  lunar,  bone  and  ossify,  have  no  formal 
relation  corresponding  to  their  relation  in  mean- 
ing. And  we  shall  see  in  a  subsequent  chapter 
(p.  119)  that  our  language  has  suffered  some 


io6  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

injury  in  the  partial  loss  of  its  capacity  for 
forming  compound  words.  On  the  whole,  how- 
ever, the  effect  of  the  etymological  diversity  of 
the  vocabulary  has  been  to  provide  the  language 
with  an  unequalled  profusion  of  approximate 
synonyms  expressing  subtle  shades  of  difference 
in  meaning  and  in  tone  of  feeling.  The  dis- 
tinction between  such  pairs  of  words  as  paternal 
and  fatherly,  fraternity  and  brotherhood,  celestial 
and  heavenly,  fortune  and  luck,  felicity  and 
happiness,  royal  and  kingly,  is  very  real  to  an 
Englishman  who  knows  his  own  language,  but 
is  not  easy  to  render  in  any  other  tongue. 

It  is  true,  as  a  general  rule,  that  when  there 
are  two  words  expressing  approximately  the  same 
notion,  one  of  them  being  of  native  and  the 
other  of  French  or  Latin  etymology,  the  native 
word  is  the  one  that  has  the  fuller  emphasis, 
and  the  greater  richness  of  emotional  suggestion. 
This  fact,  however,  by  no  means  justifies  the 
rule  which  some  writers  have  laid  down  and 
tried  to  carry  out  in  practice,  that  '  Anglo-Saxon ' 
words  should  be  substituted  for  those  of  Latin 
etymology  wherever  it  is  possible  to  do  so. 
Over-emphasis,  force  of  diction  in  excess  of  the 
strength  of  the  feeling  that  is  to  be  rendered, 
is  a  falsity  in  style  no  less  blameworthy  than 


in.]  WHAT  ENGLISH  OWES  TO  FOREIGN  TONGUES  107 

the  opposite  vice  of  inadequate  expression.  It 
must  be  remembered,  also,  that  the  peculiar 
depth  of  meaning  of  our  native  English  words 
is  largely  due  to  the  existence  of  the  less 
vigorous  synonyms  of  Latin  origin,  which  enables 
us  to  reserve  the  nobler  words  for  noble  uses. 
If  we  accustom  ourselves  to  use  strong  words 
where  no  emphasis  is  needed,  and  words  fraught 
with  beautiful  suggestion  when  our  matter  is 
trivial,  we  shall  be  merely  contributing  to  the 
debasement  of  our  native  language.  The  cry  for 
'  Saxon  English '  sometimes  means  nothing  more 
than  a  demand  for  plain  and  unaffected  diction, 
and  a  condemnation  of  the  idle  taste  for  "  words 
of  learned  length  and  thundering  sound,"  which 
has  prevailed  at  some  periods  of  our  literature. 
So  far,  it  is  worthy  of  all  respect ;  but  the 
pedantry  that  would  bid  us  reject  the  word  fittest 
for  our  purpose  because  it  is  not  of  native  origin 
ought  to  be  strenuously  resisted. 

It  is  not  uncommon  to  meet  with  sneers  at 
the  pedantry  of  English  men  of  science  in  fram- 
ing their  technical  words  from  Greek  and  Latin, 
when  they  might  express  their  meaning  by 
words  taken  from  the  vocabulary  of  common 
life.  There  is  no  doubt  that  it  is  foolish  to 
use  technical  terms  when  scientific  precision  is 


lo8  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

unnecessary,  and  where  the  meaning  may  be  as 
well  expressed  in  words  intelligible  to  the  un- 
learned. But,  on  the  other  hand,  every  science 
needs  its  special  vocabulary  of  terms  that  can 
be  definitely  limited  to  one  precise  meaning. 
It  would  have  been  possible  to  construct  a 
vocabulary  for  modern  science  consisting  of 
popular  words  taken  in  arbitrarily  restricted 
senses,  and  of  compounds  formed  out  of  native 
English  elements.  In  German,  indeed,  this  kind 
of  thing  has  been  done  to  a  very  considerable 
extent  But  it  is  often  a  positive  disadvantage 
that  a  scientific  word  should  suggest  too  obtru- 
sively its  etymological  meaning.  A  term  which 
is  taken  from  a  foreign  language,  or  formed 
out  of  foreign  elements,  can  be  rigidly  confined 
to  the  meaning  expressed  in  its  definition ;  a 
term  of  native  formation  cannot  be  so  easily 
divested  of  misleading  popular  associations.  If, 
for  example,  the  English  founders  of  the  science 
of  geology  had  chosen  to  call  it  '  earth-lore,' 
every  one  would  have  felt  that  the  word  ought 
to  have  a  far  wider  meaning  than  that  which 
was  assigned  to  it.  The  Greek  compound,  which 
etymologically  means  just  the  same  thing,  has 
been  without  difficulty  restricted  to  one  only  of 
the  many  possible  applications  of  its  literal 


in.]  WHAT  ENGLISH  OWES  TO  FOREIGN  TONGUES  109 

sense.  Sometimes  also  a  scientific  term  embodies 
in  its  etymology  a  notion  which  the  progress  of 
discovery  shows  to  have  been  erroneous  or  im- 
perfect :  thus  the  name  oxygen,  formed  by  the 
French  chemists  from  Greek  elements,  literally 
implies  that  the  element  so  called  is  the  dis- 
tinctive constituent  of  acids.  If  our  chemists, 
instead  of  adopting  the  word  as  it  stands,  had 
framed  a  native  compound  of  corresponding 
meaning  (as  the  Germans  have  done  in  their 
Sauerstojf),  the  retention  of  the  name  would 
have  had  the  inconvenient  result  of  suggesting 
to  beginners  in  chemistry  an  erroneous  notion. 
As  it  is,  we  can  continue  to  speak  of '  oxygen ' 
without  thinking  of  its  etymology,  while  if  we 
do  happen  to  know  the  literal  sense  we  may 
learn  from  it  an  interesting  fact  in  the 
history  of  science.  There  is  some  ground 
for  the  complaint  that  the  student  who  is 
ignorant  of  Greek  and  Latin  may  find  the 
existing  terminology  of  modern  science  a 
severe  burden  on  his  memory.  But  this  disad- 
vantage, though  real,  is  far  smaller  than  those 
that  would  result  from  any  thoroughgoing  attempt 
to  introduce  vernacular  equivalents  for  the  terms 
of  classical  derivation.  It  is,  however,  much  to 
be  desired  that  men  of  science  would  take 


i  io  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CH.  in.] 

greater    pains    to    fashion    their     new    words    in 
accordance  with  correct  philological  principles. 

Against  the  sentimental  purism  that  regards 
mixture  in  language  as  a  sin  which  no  gain  in 
expressive  power  can  atone  for,  it  would  be  vain 
to  attempt  to  argue.  But  if  we  are  content  to 
estimate  the  worth  of  a  language  by  its  effi- 
ciency in  fulfilling  the  purposes  for  which 
language  exists,  we  cannot  reasonably  deny  that 
English  has  been  immeasurably  improved  by  its 
incorporation  of  alien  elements.  The  slender 
vocabulary  of  Old  English  might,  no  doubt, 
have  attained  a  great  degree  of  copiousness 
purely  by  development  of  its  native  resources, 
without  foreign  aid  ;  but,  so  far  as  we  can  see, 
the  subtlety  and  varied  force  characteristic  of 
modern  English  could  never  have  been  acquired 
by  this  means.  It  is  true  that  our  language  is 
a  difficult  instrument  to  use  with  full  effect,  on 
account  of  its  richness  in  those  seeming 
synonyms  which  ignorant  or  careless  writers 
employ  without  discrimination  ;  but  in  skilled 
hands  it  is  capable  of  a  degree  of  precision  and 
energy  which  can  be  equalled  in  few  languages 
either  ancient  or  modern. 


CHAPTER    IV. 
WORD-MAKING   IN   ENGLISH. 

THE  English  language  has  augmented  its  resources 
not  only  by  the  adoption  of  words  from  other 
tongues,  but  also  by  the  making  of  new  words. 
There  are  three  possible  ways  in  which  a  new  word 
can  be  made :  ( i )  by  Composition,  which  means  the 
joining  together  of  two  existing  words  to  form  a 
compound  ;  (2)  by  Derivation,  which  means  the 
making  of  a  new  word  out  of  an  old  one,  usually 
by  the  addition  of  some  prefix  or  suffix  which  is 
not  itself  a  word,  but  is  significant  in  combina- 
tion ;  and  (3)  by  Root-creation,  which  is  the 
invention  of  an  entirely  new  word,  usually  either 
imitative  of  some  inarticulate  noise,  or  suggested 
by  some  instinctive  feeling  of  expressiveness. 

§  1.  Composition. 

A  compound  word  is  a  word  formed  by  joining 
two  or   more  words  to   express  a   meaning  that 


H2  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

could  be  rendered  by  a  phrase  of  which  the 
simple  words  form  part.  Some  languages  have 
no  compound  words  at  all  ;  and  those  which 
have  them  do  not  all  form  them  after  the  same 
manner.  The  principles  of  English  word-com- 
pounding are,  to  a  great  extent,  inherited  from 
the  primitive  Indo-Germanic  language.  In  those 
kinds  of  compounds  that  most  frequently  occur, 
the  last  element  expresses  a  general  meaning,  which 
the  prefixed  element  renders  less  general.  Thus 
an  apple-tree  is  a  tree,  but  only  a  particular  kind 
of  tree.  In  the  original  Indo-Germanic  language 
the  prefixed  element  in  a  compound  of  this  sort 
was  not,  properly  speaking,  a  word,  but  a  word- 
stem  :  that  is  to  say,  a  word  deprived  of  those 
grammatical  characters — case,  number,  gender, 
mood,  tense,  person,  etc.,  which  it  would  possess 
if  it  occurred  separately  in  a  sentence.1  It  has 
still  this  character,  so  far  as  meaning  is  concerned, 
in  those  English  compounds  that  are  formed  on 
the  inherited  pattern.  Thus  apple-  in  apple-tree  is 
neither  singular  nor  plural,  neither  nominative, 

1This  comes  out  clearly  in  such  a  language  as  Greek,  which  has 
preserved  the  primitive  Indo-Germanic  system  of  inflexions.  Thus 
oikodespoles  is  Greek  for  '  master  of  a  house ' ;  but  while  despotes, 
'master,'  is  a  real  word,  oiko-,  'house,'  is  only  a  stem.  To  make 
it  into  a  word,  capable  of  being  used  in  a  sentence,  we  must  add  the 
endings  that  mark  case  and  number,  as  in  oikos,  nom.  sing.,  oikon,, 
ace.  sing.,  oikou^  gen.  sing.,  oikoi,  nonx.  pi.,  oikous,  ace.  plural. 


iv.]  WORD-MAKING  IN  ENGLISH  113 

accusative,  nor  genitive.  Hence  the  phrase  for 
which  such  a  compound  is  the  condensed  expres- 
sion admits  of  great  variety  of  form  ;  the  former  of 
the  two  words  may  occur  in  it  in  any  case  or  in 
either  number  ;  and  the  meaning  of  the  compound 
varies  accordingly.  A  tree-frog  is  a  frog  that  lives 
in  trees  ;  a  tree-fern  is  a  fern  that  is  a  tree ;  a 
tree-fruit  is  the  fruit  produced  by  a  tree.  As  a 
general  rule,  our  knowledge  of  the  things  denoted 
by  the  simple  words  guides  us  at  once  to  a 
correct  understanding  of  the  meaning  of  the  com- 
pound. This,  however,  is  not  always  the  case. 
A  house-boat  might  very  well  mean  a  sort  of  boat 
usually  kept  in  a  boat-house,  or  a  boat  that 
belongs  to  a  house,  or  that  supplies  the  needs  of 
houses.  It  is  only  custom  that  has  decided  that 
the  compound  word  shall  mean  a  boat  that  serves 
as  a  house.  The  general  meaning  of  this  class 
of  compounds  might  be  expressed  by  saying  that 
the  noun  which  is  formed  of  the  two  nouns  A  and 
B  means  '  a  B  which  has  some  sort  of  relation  to 
an  A  or  to  A's  in  general.' 

The  compounds  formed  by  prefixing  one  noun 
to  another,  however,  constitute  only  one  out  of 
the  many  classes  of  compounds  which  exist  in 
English.  There  are  compounds  of  adjective  and 
noun,  as  blackbird,  hotbed ;  of  adverb  and  noun,  as 

H 


ii4  THE   MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

downfall',  of  noun  and  adjective,  as  grass-green, 
purse-proud,  penny-wise ;  of  adjective  or  adverb 
and  adjective,  as  dark-blue,  ever-young',  and  of  noun 
or  adjective  and  verb,  as  wiredraw,  whitewash  ; 
and  the  very  many  compounds  of  adverb  and. 
verb,  such  as  overcome,  inlay,  outlive,  upturn.  In  all 
these  cases  the  literal  meaning  of  the  compound  is 
that  of  the  last  element,  only  limited  or  specialized. 
There  are  other  compounds  to  which  this  descrip- 
tion is  not  applicable.  We  have,  for  instance, 
adjectives  like  barefoot  (having  the  feet  bare)  ; 
nouns  like  redstart  (a  bird  which  has  a  red  '  start ' 
or  tail) ;  and  adjectives  like  long-haired,  five-leaved, 
lion-hearted,  which  are  derivatives  formed  from 
combinations  of  two  words.  From  the  fifteenth 
century  onwards  many  compound  nouns  and 
adjectives  have  been  formed  in  imitation  of  French, 
in  which  the  first  element  is  a  verb-stem  (in  the 
original  examples  it  was  the  imperative  of  a  verb) 
and  the  second  element  is  a  noun  denoting  the 
object  of  the  action,  as  in  breakfast,  breakneck, 
kill-joy,  makeshift,  save-all,  scapegrace,  scarecrow, 
spendthrift,  tosspot,  turnkey.  We  have  also  many 
nouns  and  adjectives  compounded  with  a  verb- 
stem  and  an  adverb,  as  break-up,  come-down, 
knock-out,  run-away. 

Some  of  the  types   of  compounds  enumerated 


iv.]  WORD-MAKING  IN  ENGLISH  115 

above  are  formed  on  patterns  which  have 
come  down  by  tradition  from  times  before  the 
English  or  even  the  Germanic  language  had  any 
existence,  when  the  elements  that  were  joined  in 
composition  were  not  words  but  mere  word-stems; 
while  others  were  originally  what  are  called  by 
grammarians  'improper'  or  'spurious'  compounds. 
An  improper  compound  is  a  phrase  consisting 
of  words  in  regular  syntactical  relation,  which 
has  come  to  be  regarded  as  a  single  word.  Such, 
in  modern  English,  are  father-in-law ',  man-of- 
war,  jews'-harp.  Words  like  tradesman  and 
gownsman  may  be  regarded  as  improper  com- 
pounds, because  they  are  at  any  rate  imitated 
from  phrases  in  which  the  first  word  was  a  noun 
in  the  genitive  case. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  modern  language, 
in  which  the  loss  of  inflexions  has  obscured  the 
difference  between  words  and  word-stems,  and  in 
which  the  attributive  use  of  the  noun  is  an 
ordinary  part  of  syntax,  the  distinction  of '  proper' 
and  '  improper '  compounds  is  only  partially  valid  ; 
but  historically  it  is  of  considerable  importance. 

As  any  page  of  an  '  Anglo-Saxon '  dictionary 
will  show,  compound  words  were  abundant  in 
Old  English;  and  in  every  succeeding  age  of 
the  language  a  multitude  of  new  compounds  have 


ii6  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

come  into  existence.  And  yet,  if  we  take  a  page 
of  modern  German  and  place  beside  it  a  good 
translation  into  English,  we  shall  not  fail  to 
perceive  that  the  compound  words  are  very 
much  more  numerous  in  the  German  original 
than  in  the  English  rendering.  Another  note- 
worthy fact  is  that  a  great  number  of  compounds, 
once  generally  used,  are  now  obsolete,  although 
the  simple  words  composing  them  are  still 
universally  familiar.  It  may  be  worth  while  to 
inquire  why  this  has  happened. 

Although  word-composition,  in  those  lan- 
guages which  freely  admit  it,  is  one  of  the 
readiest  means  of  supplying  the  need  for  new 
words,  compounds  are  often  somewhat  awkward 
in  actual  use.  A  compound  word  is  a  descrip- 
tion, often  an  imperfect  description  ;  and  when 
an  object  of  perception  or  thought  is  familiar 
to  us,  we  desire  that  its  name  shall  suggest  the 
thing  to  our  minds  directly,  and  not  through 
the  intervention  of  irrelevant  ideas.  Accordingly, 
a  compound  word  for  a  simple  notion  gives  a 
certain  sense  of  inconvenience,  unless  we  are 
able  to  forget  its  literal  meaning.  It  is  true 
that  we  frequently  succeed  in  doing  this  :  we 
use  multitudes  of  compound  words  without 
mentally  analysing  them  at  all.  In  such  cases 


iv.]  WORD- MAKING  IX  ENGLISH  117 

the  compound  often  undergoes  processes  of 
phonetic  change  which  a  distinct  consciousness 
of  its  etymological  meaning  would  not  have 
allowed  to  take  place.  Thus  the  Old  English 
godspel,  literally  'good  tidings'  (which  early 
became  godspel,  through  misreading  the  first 
element  as  '  God '  instead  of  '  good '),  is  now 
gospel ;  the  late  Old  English  husbonda,  a  com- 
pound of  hus  house  and  bonda  dweller,  cul- 
tivator, is  now  not  housebond  but  husband;  the 
poetical  designation  day's  eye  is  now  daisy,  a 
word  which  we  never  think  of  as  containing 
two  elements ;  holy  day  has  become  holiday ; 
Christ's  mass  is  now  Christmas,  with  an  altered 
pronunciation  which  quite  disguises  the  first 
word.  This  process  is  especially  observable  in 
place-names,  where,  even  more  than  in  ordinary 
compound  words,  the  original  descriptive  meaning 
is  a  palpable  irrelevance.  Very  few  names  of 
English  places  are  now  intelligible  to  persons 
unlearned  in  etymology,  even  when  the  separate 
words  of  which  they  are  composed  are  still 
familiar  in  everyday  speech.  The  Old  English 
stdn  survives  as  '  stone,'  and  tun  as  '  town ' ; 
but  the  place-name  Stdntun  is  now  not  '  Stone- 
town  '  but  '  Stanton.'  Pedridan-tTin,  the  '  town  ' 
or  farm  enclosure  on  the  river  Pedride,  is  now 


uS  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

Petherton,    though    the    name    of   the   river   has 
come  to  be   pronounced  '  Parret.' 

A  consideration  of  these  and  similar  examples 
will  show  that  compound  words  have  often  the 
disadvantage  that  their  etymological  meaning 
has  to  be  forgotten  before  they  can  become 
quite  „  satisfactory  instruments  of  expression.  It 
would  appear  that  the  English  are,  from  what- 
ever cause,  more  conscious  of  this  inconvenience 
than  are  the  speakers  of  some  other  languages. 
At  any  rate,  although  many  new  compounds 
have  been  formed  in  every  period  of  the 
language,  a  large  proportion  of  them  have  been 
short-lived  or  of  very  limited  currency :  the 
general  tendency  has  been  to  replace  them  by 
other-  words.  In  the  Middle  English  period 
this  tendency  was  fostered  by  the  circumstance 
that  the  two  fashionable  languages,  French  and 
Latin,  make  very  little  use  of  composition  ; 
and  the  common  practice  of  adopting  words 
from  these  languages  made  it  easy  to  find 
substitutes  for  the  native  compounds.  The  Old 
English  names  for  arts  and  sciences — such  as 
Itececrxft  (leechcraft)  for  medicine,  scopcrxft  for 
poetry,  tungolcrseft  for  astronomy,  rlmcrseft  for 
arithmetic — disappeared  early  from  the  language, 
their  places  being  taken  by  words  adopted 


iv.]  WORD-MAKING  IN  ENGLISH  119 

through  French  from  Latin,  or  through  French 
and  Latin  from  Greek.  The  fourteenth  century 
monk  who  wrote  ayenbite  (of  inwyf}  for  '  remorse 
(of  conscience) '  did  not  succeed  in  inducing  any 
other  writer  to  use  his  new  word :  the  Latin- 
French  synonym  was  felt  to  be  better  for  its 
purpose.  Even  now,  a  well-established  compound 
is  often  partly  superseded  by  a  simple  word  or  a 
derivative :  for  example,  we  use  the  word  steamer 
more  frequently  than  steamboat  or  steamship. 

The  habit  of  freely  adopting  foreign  words, 
which  has  been  produced  by  the  conditions  under 
which  the  English  language  has  been  developed, 
has  had  the  good  effect  of  relieving  us  from  the 
necessity  of  having  recourse  to  composition  in 
cases  where  a  compound,  as  such,  is  less  suitable 
for  our  purpose  than  a  simple  word.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  our  language  has  lost  something  of  its 
capacity  for  forming  compounds  even  where  they 
would  be  useful.  When  Carlyle,  imitating  the 
German  Schadenfreude,  speaks  of  "  a  mischief-joy, 
which  is  often  a  justice-joy,"  we  somehow  feel  that 
these  formations  are  alien  to  the  genius  of  the 
language,  though  if  it  were  not  for  this  the  words 
would  have  been  welcome  additions  to  our  voca- 
bulary. It  would  seem  un-English  to  say  that  a 
person  was  rank-proud,  though  the  apparently 


120  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

analogous  purse-proud  has  long  been  a  recognised 
word  ;  and  country-love  or  virtue-love  for  '  love  of 
country,'  '  love  of  virtue,'  would  be  equally  in- 
admissible. And  yet  not  only  does  modern 
English  possess  an  enormous  number  of  com- 
pounds, but  new  ones  are  continually  introduced  ; 
and,  what  is  still  more  remarkable,  many  of  these 
additions  to  our  language,  when  we  first  hear 
them,  do  not  seem  in  the  slightest  degree  novel. 
Probably  nobody  has  ever  used  or  ever  will  use 
the  word  purple-eared ;  but  if  the  meaning  ever 
needs  to  be  expressed  no  one  will  say  that  the 
word  is  not  English.  It  is  not  easy  to  say 
definitely  what  kinds  of  compounds  are  rejected 
by  the  instinct  of  the  language  and  what  kinds 
are  freely  admitted.  In  general,  the  new  com- 
pounds that  find  ready  acceptance  are  those 
which  belong  to  some  particular  type  or  pattern 
which  is  exemplified  in  a  large  number  of  common 
words.  One  such  type  is  that  of  the  so-called 
'  parasynthetic '  formation,  like  blue-eyed,  long- 
haired, swallow-tailed.  English  idiom  leaves  us 
almost  as  free  to  invent  new  compounds  of  the 
type  of  blue-eyed  as  to  invent  new  phrases  of 
the  type  of  with  blue  eyes.  When  one  or  both  the 
elements  happen  to  be  very  commonly  used  in 
combinations  of  this  kind,  the  compound  adjective, 


iv.]  WORD-MAKING  IN  ENGLISH  121 

whether  we  have  met  with  it  before  or  not,  is 
quite  as  natural  a  mode  of  expression  as  the 
equivalent  phrase.  But  when  this  is  not  the  case, 
the  '  parasynthetic  '  adjective,  though  still  allow- 
able, strikes  us  as  somewhat  artificial,  and  a 
composition  in  which  such  words  occur  very 
frequently  is  apt  to  sound  affected. 

There  are  several  other  types  of  composition 
which  are  so  familiar  to  us  from  the  multitude  of 
existing  specimens  that  we  can  employ  them 
almost  without  restriction  to  form  new  words. 
For  instance,  we  seldom  hesitate  to  make,  when- 
ever we  feel  the  need  of  it,  a  new  compound  on 
the  pattern  of  coach-house,  hair-brush,  water-jug, 
where  the  first  element  indicates  the  particular  use 
to  which  the  object  designated  is  adapted.  It 
may  be  remarked  that  the  composition  of  long 
polysyllables  is  generally  avoided  as  ungraceful : 
and,  further,  that  most  of  the  words  derived  from 
French  and  Latin  appear  somewhat  unfrequently 
in  compounds,  probably  because  in  the  periods 
when  word-composition  was  most  frequent  they 
were  still  felt  to  be  more  or  less  exotic. 

With  reference  to  the  formation  of  compound 
verbs,  modern  English  is  somewhat  peculiar  in 
its  usages.  Perhaps  the  reader  may  be  familiar 
with  the  practice  of  modern  German  in  dealing 


122  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

with  what  are  called  separable  prefixes.  In  the 
German  dictionaries  we  find  a  verb  aufgeben, 
compounded  of  the  adverb  auf '  up  '  and  the  verb 
geben  '  to  give.'  In  the  infinitive  this  is  written 
as  one  word,  the  adverbial  part  coming  first.  So 
it  is,  under  certain  conditions,  in  the  indicative 
andv  subjunctive  ;  but  '  I  give  it  up '  is  ordinarily 
rendered  in  German  by  ich  gebe  es  auf,  where 
the  two  elements  are  treated  as  separate  words, 
the  adverb  coming  last,  with  the  object-pronoun 
between  it  and  the  verb.  Now  combinations  of 
this  sort  may,  from  one  point  of  view,  be  regarded 
as  phrases  rather  than  as  compounds  ;  the  adverb 
and  the  verb  are  really  separate  words.  The 
idiom  of  the  language  requires  that  under  some 
conditions  the  adverb  shall  precede  the  verb 
and  that  under  other  conditions  it  shall  follow 
it ;  and  in  the  former  case  custom  has  ordered 
that  the  two  words  shall  be  written  as  one.  In 
Old  English  the  position  of  the  adverb  was 
similarly  variable  (though  the  rules  for  its  position 
were  not  so  strict  as  in  German)  ;  but  in  modern 
English  prose  we  must  always  put  the  adverb 
last.  In  poetry,  indeed,  there  are  exceptions. 
Browning  writes  : 

"  Then  a  beam  of  fun  outbroke 
On  the  bearded  mouth  that  spoke." 


iv.]  WORD-MAKING   IX   ENGLISH  123 

But  outbroke  is  merely  poetical  :  in  plain  prose 
we  must  say  '  broke  out.'  We  can,  if  we  please, 
call  give  up,  break  out,  set  up,  put  through,  and 
such  like,  '  compound  verbs ' ;  and  in  a  certain 
sense  the  appellation  is  quite  justifiable.  If  we 
adopt  this  nomenclature  the  number  of  compound 
verbs  in  English  is  beyond  all  calculation,  and 
in  fact  we  are  continually  inventing  new  ones. 
In  its  power  of  expressing  fine  distinctions  of 
meaning  by  this  method  English  vies  with  Greek 
and  German,  and  has  a  great  advantage  over 
the  Romanic  languages,  which'  have  hardly  any 
compound  verbs  at  all. 

But  alongside  these  '  virtual  compounds,' 
English  has  a  considerable  number  of  verbs 
formed  with  prefixed  adverbs,  such  as  overtake, 
upset,  understand.  In  most  cases  their  meaning 
is  not  obvious  from  their  composition,  and  it  is 
usually  quite  different  from  that  of  the  com- 
bination of  the  verb  with  the  following  adverb. 
'  To  overtake  a  person '  does  not  mean  the  same 
as  '  to  take  a  person  over ' ;  'to  upset  a  thing ' 
happens  to  have  a  meaning  quite  opposite  to 
that  of  '  to  set  a  thing  up.'  Compounds  of  this 
class  originated  in  an  older  stage  of  the  language : 
the  principle  of  composition  which  they  represent 
has  almost  died  out,  so  that  as  a  rule  we  cannot 


124  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

form  any  new  words  on  the  same  pattern.  We 
can,  it  is  true,  with  some  degree  of  freedom, 
prefix  over  and  under,  with  the  sense  '  too  much,' 
'  too  little,'  to  verbs  ;  but  in  general  the  modern 
feeling  of  the  language  resists  the  introduction 
of  compounds  of  this  kind,  and  very  few  of 
them  have  come  in  since  the  sixteenth  century. 
It  is  equally  foreign  to  the  spirit  of  the  modern 
language  to  add  to  the  number  of  those  com- 
pound nouns  or  adjectives  which  are  formed 
by  prefixing  an  adverb  to  a  verb-stem,  a  verbal 
noun,  or  a  participle,  such  as  outbreak,  outfit, 
income,  downfall,  downsitting,  uprising,  onlooker, 
outfit,  forthcoming,  downtrodden.  The  method  of 
formation  of  these  words  is  a  relic  of  the  time 
when  in  a  verbal  phrase  the  adverb  could  precede 
the  verb — when,  for  instance,  it  was  as  natural 
to  say  '  to  out  break '  as  'to  break  out '  ;  but 
new  compounds  of  the  kind  could  be  easily 
formed  down  to  the  seventeenth  century.  They 
are  fairly  abundant,  and  admirably  expressive ; 
but  we  have  almost x  entirely  ceased  to  form 

1 A  word  of  this  formation  which  has  recently  gained  some  currency 
in  journalistic  use  is  upkeep,  meaning  '(cost  of)  keeping-up.'  It 
appears  to  have  been  imported  from  the  Scottish  dialect,  in  which 
this  mode  of  composition  has  been  more  generally  used  than 
in  standard  English.  From  the  same  source  we  have  obtained 
outcome  (brought  into  literary  English  by  Carlyle)  and  uptake. 


iv.]  WORD-MAKING  IN  ENGLISH  125 

new  words  on  the  same  pattern.  Although  we 
perhaps  more  frequently  say  '  to  fit  up '  than  '  to 
fit  out/  it  would  seem  very  eccentric  to  speak 
of  an  upfit,  or  an  upfitter;  and  we  should  not 
think  of  using  downbroken  as  a  parallel  to  down- 
trodden. Cyclists  talk  of  '  lighting-up  time,'  not 
of  '  uplighting  time,'  which  would  be  quite  un- 
idiomatic.  Indeed  many  such  compounds  that 
were  once  current  are  now  gone  out  of  general 
use.  The  translators  of  our  Bible  could  write 
'  My  downsitting  and  mine  uprising ' ;  but  in 
natural  modern  English  the  equivalent  expression 
would  be  '  my  sitting  down  and  my  rising  up.' 
Not  long  ago  a  very  able  foreign  scholar,  writing 
a  grammatical  treatise  in  English,  puzzled  his 
readers  by  using  the  word  down-toners  as  a  name 
for  the  class  of  adverbs  which  (like  rather,  some- 
what} '  tone  down '  the  force  of  the  words  to 
which  they  are  prefixed.  No  doubt,  if  the 
phrase  '  to  tone  down '  had  existed  in  the 
sixteenth  century,  a  writer  of  that  period  could 
have  spoken  of  a  '  down-toner '  without  any  risk 
of  not  being  understood.  But  in  this  respect 
the  language  has  undergone  a  change,  which 
may  be  a  change  for  the  worse,  but  which  it 
would  be  vain  to  try  to  resist. 

The    composition    of    an    agent-noun    with    a 


126  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

following  adverb,  which  was  foreign  to  English  in 
its  earliest  stages,  has  been  fairly  common  from 
the  fourteenth  century  onwards.  Chaucer  has 
"  holdere  up  of  Troye "  ;  Lydgate  speaks  of 
Nimrod  as  "fynder  up  of  false  religions"; 
Shakspere  has  "the  finder-out  of  this  secret"; 
the  Bible  of  1611  has  "a  setter-forth  of 
strange  gods " ;  later  examples  of  this  mode 
of  formation  are  cutter-out,  hanger-on,  filler-in, 
Jitter-up. 

The  English  of  poetry  and  of  impassioned 
writing  differs  considerably  in  its  principles  of 
word-composition  from  the  English  of  ordinary 
prose.  Most  of  the  compounds  that  are  in 
ordinary  use  are  too  lifeless,  too  unsuggestive,  or 
too  trivial  in  association  to  be  freely  employed  in 
poetry,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  our  poets  have 
generally  assumed  great  liberty  in  the  invention 
of  compounds  which  in  prose  would  be  quite 
inadmissible.  In  this  respect,  however,  there  are 
great  differences  between  poets,  even  those  who 
are  most  nearly  equal  in  rank.  While  Shakspere 
abounds  with  splendid  audacities  such  as  "proud- 
pied  April,"  "  a  heaven-kissing  hill,"  "the  world- 
without-end  hour,"  Spenser's  inventions  of  this 
kind  are  comparatively  few,  though  the  exceeding 
felicity  of  some  of  them  (as  "  self-consuming  care,'' 


iv.]  WORD-MAKING  IN  ENGLISH  127 

"  silver-dropping  tears  ")  causes  them  to  make  an 
impression  that  has  led  many  to  suppose  that 
they  are  peculiarly  characteristic  of  his  style. 
"  Rosy-fingered  Morn,"  which  occurs  in  Spenser,  is 
a  literal  rendering  of  Homer's  rhododaktulos  Eos. 
The  translators  of  Homer,  from  Chapman  down- 
wards, have  naturally  been  led  to  imitate  the 
compound  epithets  of  the  original ;  and,  partly 
through  this  channel,  and  partly  owing  to  the 
classical  learning  of  our  poets,  the  copious  word- 
composition  of  Greek  has  had  great  influence  on 
the  diction  of  English  poetry.  Of  the  greater 
poets  of  the  nineteenth  century,  Wordsworth  is 
the  most  sparing  in  the  use  of  compounds,  and 
this  characteristic  may  be  accounted  for  by  his 
love  of  simplicity  and  naturalness  of  expression, 
and  his  aversion  to  the  production  of  poetic  effect 
by  any  other  means  than  the  direct  appeal  of 
thought  and  feeling  to  the  mind  of  the  reader. 
There  is  generally  little  in  common  between 
Wordsworth  and  Byron ;  yet  Byron's  rhetorical 
fervour  is  little  more  favourable  to  the  use  of 
this  means  of  expression  than  is  the  simplicity  of 
the  other  poet.  He  employs  but  few  compounds, 
and  hardly  ever  any  that  were  not  already 
current.  On  the  other  hand,  Shelley,  Keats, 
Tennyson,  and  Browning  are  all,  for  different 


128  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

reasons  founded  in  their  diversities  of  poetic 
temperament,  remarkable  for  their  fertility  in 
the  invention  of  novel  compounds.  It  would  be 
highly  interesting  to  consider  how  the  differences 
of  spirit  and  feeling  in  these  poets  reveal  them- 
selves in  the  different  ways  in  which  they  employ 
this-  method  of  enriching  their  vocabulary ;  but 
the  matter  belongs  rather  to  the  domain  of  the 
literary  critic  than  to  that  of  the  student  of 
language. 

§  2.   Derivation. 

Old  English  was  considerably  less  rich  than 
Modern  English  in  methods  of  making  new 
words  by  derivation.  It  is  true  that  a  large 
portion  of  the  Old  English  vocabulary  consists 
of  words  derived  from  other  words  that  existed 
in  the  language.  But  very  many  of  these  de- 
rivatives had  been  already  formed  before  the 
English  came  over  from  the  continent,  and  the 
processes,  by  which  they  were  made  had  become 
obsolete  before  the  date  of  the  earliest  Old 
English  literature.  Perhaps  this  statement  may 
need  a  little  illustration  to  make  it  clear  to 
readers  unacquainted  with  philology.  Every- 
body can  see  that  the  word  laughter  is  derived 
from  the  verb  laugh  ;  and  yet  we  should  never 


iv.]  WORD-MAKING  IN  ENGLISH  129 

think  of  forming  a  new  substantive  by  the  same 
process  from  any  other  verb.  One  of  Mr.  F.  R. 
Stockton's  personages,  indeed  speaks  of  a  dog 
"  bursting  into  barkter"  but  nobody  would  seri- 
ously propose  to  coin  a  new  word  of  this  kind. 
The  ending  -ter  is  no  longer  '  a  living  suffix,' 
and,  in  fact,  it  had  ceased  to  be  such  before 
Old  English  existed  as  a  separate  language. 
Many  other  suffixes  which  appear  in  Old  Eng- 
lish derivatives  were,  in  like  manner,  never  used 
in  the  formation  of  new  words. 

There  is  in  English  a  large  class  of  deriva- 
tive verbs  which,  if  there  were  no  other  evidence 
but  that  afforded  by  Old  English  itself,  we 
should  have  to  regard  as  formed  from  other  Old 
English  words,  either  nouns,  adjectives,  or  verbs, 
by  altering  their  vowel.  Thus  we  find  a  noun 
talu,  tale  (in  both  senses,  '  number '  and  '  story ') 
and  a  verb  tellan,  to  tell  (again  in  both  senses, 
'  to  count '  and  '  to  narrate ')  ;  a  noun  satu,  sale, 
and  a  verb  sellan,  to  sell.  Tynan,  to  enclose,  is 
derived  from  tun,  enclosure  ;  bledan,  to  bleed,  from 
blod,  blood  ;  bl&can,  to  bleach,  from  bide,  white 
or  pale  ;  fiellan,  to  fell,  cause  to  fall,  from/eattan, 
to  fall.  A  comparison  of  these  words  with  their 
equivalents  in  the  other  Germanic  languages 

teaches   us  that  the  true  account  of  their  origin 

i 


1 30  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

is  as  follows :  By  the  addition  of  a  suffix  -jo 
(pronounced  yo)  to  the  stem  of  the  substantive 
adjective,  or  verb  a  new  verb-stem  was  formed, 
to  which  the  endings  of  mood,  tense,  and 
person  were  appended.  The  earlier  forms  of 
the  verbs  above  mentioned  were  taljan,  sal/an, 
tunjan,  blodjan,  blaikjan,  falljan.  In  prehistoric 
Old  English  the  j  in  this  position  always  pro- 
duced an  alteration  in  the  vowel  of  the  preced- 
ing syllable  (unless  that  vowel  was  z),  and 
caused  the  preceding  consonant  to  be  length- 
ened or  doubled  if  the  vowel  before  it  was 
short.  Hence  taljan  became  first  tell/an  and 
then  tellan,  blodjan  became  bledan  ;  and  so  with 
the  rest.  But  all  this  had  already  taken  place 
before  Old  English  became  a  written  language  ; 
and  when  it  had  taken  place  there  was  an  end 
to  the  possibility  of  forming  any  new  '  verbs  of 
making  or  causing'  by  the  process  which  had 
previously  been  so  easy.  All  the  verbs  appar- 
ently formed  by  vowel  change  that  existed  in 
Old  English  were  inherited  from  prehistoric 
times.  Perhaps  we  might  have  expected  that 
new  derivatives  would  have  been  formed  by  vowel- 
change,  in  imitation  of  those  which  already 
existed  (for  instance,  a  verb  gedan,  to  make  good, 
might  have  been  formed  from  god,  imitating  the 


iv.]  WORD-MAKING   IN   ENGLISH  131 

relation  between  col  cool  and  celan  to  cool)  ;  but, 
so  far  as  we  know,  nothing  of  the  sort  ever 
happened.  The  Old  English  language,  at  the 
earliest  period  at  which  it  is  known  to  us,  had 
already  lost  one  of  the  most  useful  of  the  means 
for  word-making  which  it  originally  possessed. 

Almost  all  those  modes  of  derivation  which 
were  actually  current  in  Old  English  have  con- 
tinued in  constant  use  down  to  the  present 
time.  Only  a  few  of  the  most  important  of 
them  need  be  mentioned  here.  In  Old  English, 
a  verb  could  be  formed  from  a  noun  by  attach- 
ing the  conjugational  endings  to  the  stem  of  the 
noun  :  thus,  from  wilcuma,  a  welcome  guest,  was 
formed  the  verb  wilcumian  to  welcome  (ic  wil- 
cumige  I  welcome,  ic  wilcumode  I  welcomed). 
'In  later  English,  through  the  dropping  away  of 
final  syllables,  the  infinitive,  the  imperative,  and 
the  plural  and  the  first  person  singular  of  the 
present  indicative  of  the  derived  verb  have  the 
same  form  as  the  primary  noun,  so  that  what 
takes  place  seems  to  be  not  the  making  of  a 
new  word  but  the  using  of  a  noun  as  a  verb. 
Hence  the  operation  has  become,  in  modern 
English,  so  easy  that  we  perform  it  almost  un- 
consciously. In  colloquial  language,  we  can 
make  new  verbs  with  extraordinary  freedom, 


132  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

not  only  from  nouns,  but  even  from  phrases. 
"  He  '  my-dear-fellow'-ed  me  all  the  day,"  for 
instance,  is  quite  permissible  conversational 
English.  Conversely,  in  modern  English,  we 
have  an  almost  unlimited  number  of  nouns 
which  are  merely  verbs  used  substantively  to 
denote  an  act.  We  can  speak  of  '  a  wash,'  '  a 
shave,'  '  a  think,'  '  a  tumble  down,'  '  a  dig  in 
the  ribs.'  Occasionally  it  happens  that  a  noun 
in  this  way  gives  rise  to  a  verb,  which  in  its 
turn  gives  rise  to  another  noun,  all  three  words 
being  exactly  alike  in  sound  and  spelling. 
Thus,  in  the  following  examples:  (i)  'The 
smoke  of  a  pipe,'  (2)  '  To  smoke  a  pipe,'  (3) 
'  To  have  a  smokel  the  noun  of  ( i )  is  not, 
strictly  speaking,  the  same  word  as  the  noun  of 
(3).  It  is  true  that  in  cases  like  this  our 
dictionaries  usually  treat  the  secondary  noun  as 
merely  a  special  sense  of  the  primary  noun  ; 
and,  indeed,  very  often  this  treatment  is  un- 
avoidable, because  the  difference  of  meaning 
between  the  two  is  so  slight  that  in  some  con- 
texts it  disappears  altogether.  Still,  it  ought  not 
to  be  forgotten  that  from  the  historical  point  of 
view  the  two  nouns  are  really  distinct :  if  Eng- 
lish had  retained  its  original  grammatical  system 
this  would  probably  have  been  shown  by  a  dif- 


iv.]  WORD-MAKING  IN  ENGLISH  133 

ference  of  termination,  gender,  or  declension. 
Sometimes  an  Old  English  substantive  and  the 
verb  derived  from  it  have  both  survived,  but, 
owing  to  the  kind  of  sound-change  which  we 
have  named  '  divergent  development,'  the  two 
have  little  or  no  resemblance  in  sound.  Under 
these  circumstances,  the  noun  and  the  verb  are 
no  longer  distinctly  recognised  as  correlated  in 
meaning,  and  the  modern  language  has  supplied 
the  need  for  a  closely-connected  pair  of  words 
by  turning  the  noun  into  a  verb  and  vice  versa. 
For  example,  the  verb  bathe  is,  as  its  spelling  still 
shows,  a  derivative  of  bath  ;  but  in  pronunciation 
the  two  have  nothing  in  common  but  the  initial  b. 
Hence,  we  now  speak  of  '  a  bathe,'  which  does  not 
mean  quite  the  same  as  '  a  bath '  ;  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  noun  bath  has  given  rise  to  a  verb 
' to  bathl  which  differs  in  meaning  from  ' to  bathe' 
The  following  words  of  modern  origin  may 
serve  to  illustrate  the  freedom  with  which  we 
can  still  form  new  derivatives  by  means  of  suffixes 
inherited  from  Old  English  :  cleverness,  cleverly, 
gentleman/j>,  roguish,  thinker,  noisy,  horsemanj///)>. 
The  English  reader  will  be  able  at  once  to  re- 
collect many  other  words  formed  with  each  of 
these  suffixes,  and  will  perceive  also  that  he 
might,  without  seeming  at  all  eccentric  in  so 


134  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

doing,  venture  to  use  any  one  of  them  to  form 
quite  new  words.  Similarly,  we  can  prefix  the 
Old  English  negative  particle  un-  to  almost  any 
descriptive  adjective.  There  is  another  prefix  un- 
(of  different  origin)  which  we  can  prefix  quite 
freely  to  verbs  to  express  a  reversal  of  the  action, 
as  in  unfasten,  uncover ;  and  the  list  of  verbs 
formed  with  be-  (like  befog,  bemuddle)  is  almost 
interminable. 

There  are  one  or  two  Old  English  suffixes  for 
which  the  later  language  has  discovered  new  uses. 
The  ending  -isc  (now  -isJi]  was  in  Old  English 
chiefly  used  to  form  adjectives  from  names  of 
places  or  peoples,  as  in  Englisc  English,  Lundenisc 
Londonish.  It  was  also  appended  in  a  few 
instances  to  common  nouns  to  form  adjectives 
of  quality,  as  in  folcisc  popular  (from  folc,  (  folk,' 
people),  cildisc  childish.  The  suffix  -ish  is  still  a 
living  formative  in  both  these  uses.  But  about 
1400  it  began  to  be  attached  to  names  of  colour, 
to  form  adjectives  denoting  a  colour  approaching 
that  expressed  by  the  simple  word,  as  in  bluish, 
blackish.  On  the  analogy  of  the  adjectives  thus 
formed  it  afterwards  became  common  to  add  -ish 
to  any  sort  of  descriptive  adjective,  in  order  to 
express  a  slight  degree  of  the  quality  which  they 
indicate.  It  was  thenceforth  possible,  instead  of 


IV.]  WORD-MAKING  IN   ENGLISH  135 

saying  '  somewhat  good '  or  '  somewhat  bad,'  to 
express  the  idea  by  the  single  word  goodish  or 
baddish.  To  the  characteristic  English  love  of 
brevity  this  innovation  was  welcome ;  and  in 
modern  English  we  can  append  the  suffix  to  any 
adjective  denoting  a  quality  that  admits  of 
degrees. 

The  ending  -ly,  representing  the  Old  English 
-lice,  forming  adverbs  of  manner  from  adjectives, 
became  in  Middle  English  much  more  common, 
because  the  final  -e,  which  in  Old  English  was  the 
ordinary  adverbial  suffix,  ceased  to  be  pronounced, 
so  that  the  adjective  and  its  related  adverb 
became  identical  in  form.  Early  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  the  need  was  felt  for  adverbs  to  indicate 
position  in  a  numbered  series  ;  that  is  to  say,  for 
single  words  with  such  meanings  as  '  in  the  first, 
second,  or  third  place.'  The  need  was  supplied 
by  the  addition  of  the  adverbial  ending  -ly  to  the 
ordinal  numeral,  as  in  firstly,  secondly,  thirdly, 
fourthly,  which  were  unknown  to  the  older  lan- 
guage. 

Since  the  close  of  the  Old  English  period,  the 
vocabulary  of  our  language  has  been  enriched 
by  a  multitude  of  new  derivatives  formed  with 
the  prefixes  and  suffixes  that  already  existed 


136  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

in  Old  English  ;  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
the  formation  of  new  words  by  this  means  will 
continue  in  the  future.  But  the  native  machinery 
of  derivation,  though  very  little  of  it  has  become 
obsolete,  has  not  been  found  sufficient  for  the 
necessities  of  the  language,  and  has  been  largely 
supplemented  by  additions  obtained  from  other 
languages.  The  adoption  of  foreign  formative 
machinery  has  been  rendered  possible  by  the  fact 
that  many  Latin  and  French  primitive  words  have 
been  taken  into  the  English  language  along  with 
their  derivatives,  formed  with  French  or  Latin 
suffixes.  When  such  pairs  of  words  as  derive  and 
derivation,  esteem  and  estimation,  laud  and  lauda- 
tion^ condemn  and  condemnation,  had  found  their 
way,  into  the  English  vocabulary,  it  was  natural 
that  the  suffix  -ation  should  be  recognised  by 
English  speakers  as  an  allowable  means  of 
making  '  nouns  of  action '  out  of  verbs.  This 
particular  suffix  supplied  a  real  want,  because  the 
only  native  means  of  forming  nouns  of  action 
was  the  suffix  -ing,  which  was  not  quite  definite 
enough  in  meaning.  It  is  true  that  this  foreign 
suffix  has  not  been  very  extensively  attached  to 
native  words  ;  as  a  rule,  it  has  been  felt  to  be 
more  in  accordance  with  fitness  to  adopt  French 
or  Latin  nouns  of  action  ready  made.  Still,  such 


iv.]  WORD-MAKING  IN  ENGLISH  137 

words  as  botheration,  starvation,  fairation,  flirta- 
tion, backwardation,  show  that  -ation  has  to  some 
extent  been  regarded  as  an  English  formative. 
Another  foreign  suffix,  -ative,  though  very  common 
in  words  of  Latin  derivation,  has  been  appended 
to  a  native  verb  only  in  one  instance,  viz.  talkative. 
Such  formations  as  unwalkative  have  been  em- 
ployed jocularly,  but  have  never  taken  root  in  the 
language. 

In  some  instances  the  attempt  to  naturalize 
a  foreign  suffix  has  failed  because  there  was  no 
real  need  to  be  supplied.  Wyclifs  everlastingtee 
(suggested  by  eternitee  from  eterne)  did  not  find 
acceptance  ;  the  suffix  -tee  (now  -ty}  is  confined 
to  words  either  taken  from  French  or  Latin,  or  at 
least  formed  from  French  or  Latin  words.  The 
native  -ness  answered  all  purposes,  and  the  intro- 
duction of  a  foreign  synonym  was  not  required. 

It  was  otherwise  with  many  other  French 
suffixes,  such  as  -age,  -al  (as  used  in  withdrawal, 
upheaval,  betrothal],  -ment,  -able,  which  had 
nothing  corresponding  to  them  in  English,  and 
which  have  been  used  to  form  great  numbers  of 
words  that  the  language  could  badly  afford  to 
do  without  The  endings  -ize,  -ist,  -ism,  -ite, 
originally  Greek,  have  been  very  extensively  used 
in  the  formation  of  English  derivatives. 


138  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

Old  English,  in  comparison  with  most  other 
Indo-Germanic  languages,  was  remarkably  poor 
in  diminutive  endings,  and  those  which  did  exist 
were  sparingly  used.  One  of  them  was  -incel,  as 
in  tunincel  a  little  '  town  '  or  homestead  ;  but  this 
did  not  survive  into  Middle  English.  The  ending 
-ling  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  had  a  diminutive 
force  in  Old  English,  but  it  was  frequently  so  used 
in  Old  Norse,  as  in  gteslingr,  which  was  adopted 
into  English  as  gosling  (dialectally  gesling}. 
The  Norse  suffix  has  in  Modern  English 
become  quite  common  as  a  means  of  forming 
diminutive  nouns.  We  have  kingling,  princeling, 
squireling,  and  many  similar  words.  In  the 
fourteenth  century  the  Dutch  or  Flemish  diminu- 
tive ending  -kin  (identical  with  the  German  -cheri) 
came  into  English  use,  chiefly  from  nicknames 
like  Willekin,  little  William,  Jankin,  little  John. 
The  fashion  of  forming  such  nicknames  from 
Christian  names  became  exceedingly  popular,  and 
has  left  abundant  traces  in  modern  surnames  like 
Jenkins,  Atkins,  Dawkins,  Wilkins.  In  imitation 
of  these  proper  names,  the  suffix  was  afterwards 
attached  to  ordinary  substantives,  and  in  modern 
English  we  can,  at  least  in  jocular  speech,  add 
-kin  to  almost  any  noun  to  form  a  diminutive. 
Even  more  common  than  -kin,  and  more  dignified 


iv.]  WORD-MAKING  IN  ENGLISH  139 

in  use,  is  -let,  which  we  have  adopted  from  French, 
and  have  appended  to  many  native  words,  as  in 
cloudlet,  streamlet,  brooklet,  leaflet,  ringlet,  booklet. 

There  are  two  or  three  foreign  prefixes  that 
have  been  so  completely  taken  into  English  that 
we  use  them  almost  or  quite  as  freely  as  we  do 
those  of  native  origin.  The  most  useful  of  these 
is  the  Latin  re-,  again.  No  dictionary  will  ever 
contain  all  the  words  formed  with  this  prefix  that 
have  been  used  by  English  writers ;  the  com- 
pounds of  re-  with  verbs  and  nouns  of  action  are 
as  innumerable  as  those  of  un-  with  adjectives. 
In  Middle  English  again-  was  often  used  as  a 
prefix,  but  the  words  so  formed  have  become 
obsolete  :  the  English  love  of  brevity  has  caused 
the  native  prefix  to  be  supplanted  by  the  foreigner. 
The  Latin  and  French  dis-  comes  next  in  fre- 
quency of  use.  Although  Lydgate,  writing  about 
1430,  uses  the  word  distrust,  it  was  not  until  a 
hundred  years  later  that  it  became  a  common 
practice  to  attach  this  prefix  to  native  words. 
In  1659  a  grammarian  writes  that  dis-,  like  un- 
and  re-,  "  may  be  prefixed  at  pleasure."  Perhaps 
this  statement  was  even  at  that  time  somewhat 
exaggerated,  and  it  would  certainly  be  far  from 
correct  now.  Of  the  multitude  of  words  beginning 
with  this  prefix  coined  in  the  sixteenth  and  seven- 


I40  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

teenth  centuries  the  greater  part  are  obsolete 
(though  many  are  still  current,  amongst  them 
being  such  familiar  words  as  dislike,  distaste,  dis- 
praise], and  since  1 700  very  few  new  ones  have 
come  into  use.  The  prefix,  however,  is  still  felt 
to  be  quite  English  :  no  one  would  find  any  diffi- 
culty in  understanding  such  a  word  as  dislove, 
though  it  has  perhaps  never  been  used  for  cen- 
turies. Writers  of  the  nineteenth  century  have 
used  the  verbs  disgod,  dishero,  and  the  nouns 
dishealth,  discharity  ;  but  formations  of  this  kind 
have  now  an  appearance  of  being  affected.  The 
French  en-  or  em-  has  been  used  to  form  several 
English  derivatives,  as  endear,  embody,  embog, 
enliven,  ensnare,  entangle.  In  recent  times  the 
Greek  anti-,  against,  has  become  thoroughly 
naturalized.  Words  like  anti-slavery,  anti-vac- 
cinator,  anti-income-tax,  anti-corn-law,  anti-radical, 
are  intelligible  to  every  one,  and  their  number  is 
constantly  increasing.  Perhaps  these  formations 
should  be  placed  rather  under  the  head  of  com- 
bination than  under  that  of  derivation,  though  as 
the  preposition  anti  has  no  separate  existence  in 
English  this  is  a  debatable  question.  There  are 
other  foreign  elements  which  have  in  the  same 
manner  come  into  use  as  prefixes  in  the  forma- 
tion of  English  words,  such  as  the  Latin  pro  in 


iv.]  WORD-MAKING   IN   ENGLISH  141 

pro-Russian,  pro-Boer ;  post  in  post-Norman,  post- 
date ;  ante  in  antedate,  anteroom  (imitating  ante- 
chamber, which  is  French) ;  prw  in  pre-Roman, 
pre-Conquest;  co-  in  co-mate;  sub  in  sub-let;  ex 
in  ex-king ;  inter  in  interlock,  interleave ;  non  in 
non-conductor,  nonconformist,  non-existence,  non- 
natural, 

From  these  examples,  to  which  many  more 
might  be  added,  it  will  be  seen  that  the 
English  language  has  not  only  very  greatly 
enriched  its  vocabulary  by  direct  borrowing 
from  other  tongues,  but  has  also  largely  availed 
itself  of  foreign  aid  to  increase  its  power  of 
forming  new  words.  There  is  very  little  in  the 
borrowed  machinery  of  suffixes  and  prefixes 
that  can  fairly  be  called  superfluous.  Almost 
without  exception,  it  has  been  adopted,  not  out 
of  foolish  affectation,  but  because  it  supplied 
the  means  of  expressing  necessary  meanings 
with  a  degree  either  of  precision  or  of  brevity 
to  which  the  native  resources  of  the  language 
were  inadequate. 

According  to  the  definition  which  we  gave  of 
Derivation,  '  the  making  of  a  new  word  out  of 
an  old  one,'  it  includes  two  processes  which 
have  not  hitherto  been  mentioned,  but  which 


142  THE   MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

have  had  a  considerable  share  in  the  formation 
of  the  English  vocabulary.  These  are  Back- 
formation  and  Shortening. 


BACK-FORMATION. 

There  are  many  words  in  English  which  have 
a  fallacious  appearance  of  containing  some  well- 
known  derivative  suffix.  It  has  not  unfrequently 
happened  that  a  word  of  this  kind  has  been 
popularly  supposed  to  imply  the  existence  of  a 
primary  word  from  which  it  has  been  derived 
in  the  usual  way.  The  result  of  this  supposition 
is  the  unconscious  creation  of  a  new  word, 
which  is  made  out  of  the  old  one  by  depriving 
it  of  what  is  thought  to  be  its  suffix,  or  some- 
times by  the  substitution  of  a  different  suffix. 
According  to  some  eminent  scholars,  the  verb 
to  beg  has  been  in  this  way  formed  from  beggar, 
which  is  thought  to  be  adopted  from  the  old 
French  begar,  a  member  of  the  religious  order 
called  Beghards,  who  supported  themselves,  like 
the  friars,  by  begging.  This  etymology  is  dis- 
puted ;  but  there  are  many  other  instances  of  the 
process  which  are  not  open  to  question.  The 
noun  butcher  is  really  from  the  French  bouchcr,  and 
the  ending  is  not  etymologically  identical  with 


iv.]  WORD-MAKING  IN  ENGLISH  143 

the  common  English  suffix  of  agent-nouns ;  but  in 
many  dialects  people  have  come  to  use  the  verb 
to  butch,  and  to  speak  of  '  the  butching  business.' 
Other  dialectal  back-formations  are  buttle,  to 
pour  out  liquor,  from  butler,  and  cuttle,  to  make 
knives,  from  cutler.  The  noun  pedlar  is  older 
than  the  verb  to  peddle  or  the  adjective  ped- 
dling, and  broker  than  the  verb  to  broke  (now 
obsolete)  and  the  verbal  noun  broking.  Grovel- 
ling was  originally  an  adverb,  meaning  '  face 
downwards '  ;  it  was  formed  out  of  the  old 
phrase  on  grufe  (which  had  the  same  meaning) 
by  adding  the  suffix  -ling,  which  occurs  in 
many  other  adverbs,  now  mostly  obsolete,  such 
as  backling,  backwards,  headling,  head-first.  But 
grovelling  was  misunderstood  as  a  present  par- 
ticiple, and  the  verb  grovel  was  formed  from  it, 
Similarly  the  verbs  sidle  and  darkle  have  been 
formed  out  of  the  old  adverbs  sideling  and 
darkling.  Probably  the  modern  verb  nestle  is 
not,  as  is  commonly  said,  the  same  as  the  Old 
English  nestlian  to  build  a  nest,  but  has  been 
evolved  from  nestling,  an  inhabitant  of  a  nest, 
used  adjectively  as  in  'nestling  brood.'  Many 
of  the  words  that  have  been  formed  by  this 
process  are  so  happily  expressive  that  the  mis- 
understanding that  has  given  rise  to  them  must 


144  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

be  accounted  a  fortunate  accident.  It  is  to  be 
hoped,  however,  that  the  adjective  swashbuckling 
(formed  from  swashbuckler •,  literally  one  who 
'  swashes '  or  flourishes  his  buckler),  which  has 
been  used  by  many  recent  writers,  will  not 
obtain  general  currency.  Proper  names  ending 
in  -ing  have  often  given  occasion  to  humourists 
to  treat  them  as  verbal  substantives,  and  to 
evolve  verbs  from  them.  Some  years  ago  there 
was  much  talk  about  the  '  Banting  method '  of 
reducing  corpulence,  invented  by  a  gentleman 
named  Banting,  and  a  verb  to  bant  was  for  a 
time  widely  used.  Still  more  recently,  the 
uproarious  rejoicings  that  hailed  the  news  of 
the  relief  of  the  town  of  Mafeking,  besieged 
by,  the  Boers  in  1900,  suggested  to  some 
facetious  journalist  the  formation  of  a  verb  to 
maffick  (meaning  to  indulge  in  noisy  demonstra- 
tions of  patriotic  joy),  which  is  still  common  in 
newspapers,  and  has  found  a  place  in  some 
dictionaries. 

An  excellent  illustration  of  the  working  of  this 
process  is  seen  in  the  origin  of  the  verb  edit.  The 
Latin  editor,  literally  '  one  who  gives  out,'  from 
the  verb  edere  to  give  out,  was  after  the  invention 
of  printing  often  employed  in  a  special  sense  as 
denoting  the  person  who  '  gives  to  the  world,'  a, 


iv.]  WORD-MAKING  IN  ENGLISH  145 

book  or  other  literary  work  of  which  he  is  not  the 
author.  In  this  sense  it  has  passed  into  English 
and  other  modern  languages.  But  under  modern 
conditions  there  are  two  different  classes  of 
persons  concerned  in  the  production  of  a  book,  to 
either  of  whom  the  word  might  be  applied  in  its 
literal  meaning  with  equal  propriety.  The  '  giver- 
out'  of  a  book — for  instance,  of  a  classical  text 
which  has  never  before  been  printed — may  mean 
what  we  now  call  the  '  publisher,'  the  man  who 
bears  the  expense  of  printing  it,  and  makes  the 
arrangements  for  its  circulation  among  the  public, 
or  it  may  mean  the  scholar  who  puts  the  text  into 
order  for  publication,  and  provides  it  with  such 
illustrative  matter  as  it  is  deemed  to  require.  In 
early  times  these  two  functions  were  often  united 
in  the  same  person,  but  they  are  now  ordinarily 
divided.  Now  while  in  French  '  editor '  (editeur) 
has  come  to  mean  '  publisher/  in  English  it  has 
become  restricted  to  the  other  of  its  possible 
applications.  When  we  use  it  we  no  longer  think 
of  its  literal  sense  :  the  prominent  function  of  an 
'  editor '  is  not  that  of  issuing  a  literary  work  to 
the  public,  but  that  of  bringing  it  into  the  form  in 
which  it  is  to  appear.  Although  editor  is  not  a 
word  of  English  formation,  it  has  an  ending  which 
coincides  in  form  with  that  of  English  agent-nouns, 


146  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

so  that  it  has  naturally  suggested  the  coinage  of  a 
verb  '  to  edit,'  meaning  '  to  prepare  for  publication 
as  an  editor  does,'  i.e.  to  put  into  such  a  form  as  is 
thought  suitable  for  the  public  to  read.  When  we 
say,  usually  with  unfavourable  meaning,  that  a 
war  correspondent's  telegrams  have  been  '  edited,' 
we  .mean  that  they  have  undergone  alterations  or 
excisions  in  accordance  with  the  press  censor's 
notion  of  the  amount  of  information  which  ought 
to  be  given  to  the  public  at  home.  Similarly,  we 
may  say  that  the  composition  of  an  illiterate  or 
foolish  person  requires  a  great  deal  of  'editing'  in 
order  to  be  suitable  for  publication.  If  instead  of 
adopting  the  Latin  word,  we  had  rendered  it  by 
some  such  equivalent  as  outgiver  (corresponding  to 
the  German  Herausgeber^  which  is  used  quite  in 
the  English  sense  of  editor),  there  would  have  been 
no  opportunity  for  the  '  back-formation  '  of  a  verb 
with  a  meaning  so  remote  from  the  primary  sense 
of  the  substantive. 

Under  the  head  of  '  back-formation '  we  may 
not  inappropriately  refer  to  those  instances  in 
which  an  ending  common  to  a  group  of  words  has 
been  treated  as  a  separate  word,  denoting  the 
genus  of  which  the  things  signified  by  the  various 
terms  are  species.  The  process  is  exemplified  in 
Bishop  Warburton's  definition  "  Orthodoxy  is  my 


iv.]  WORD-MAKING  IN  ENGLISH  147 

doxy,  and  heterodoxy  is  another  man's  doxy." 
As  it  happens,  doxy  has  not  come  into  general  use 
as  a  synonym  for  '  mode  of  belief ' ;  but  we  do 
speak,  colloquially,  of  isms  and  ologies ;  and  'vert 
(usually  written  with  apostrophe)  is,  more  or  less 
jocularly,  used  to  designate  a  person  who,  from 
opposite  points  of  view,  would  be  described  as  a 
'  twzvert '  or  as  a  'pervert'  The  now  common 
word  cycle,  meaning  either  a  'focycle'  or  a  '  tri- 
cycle,'  is  another  example  in  point.  Although  it 
may  suit  the  convenience  of  lexicographers  to 
treat  this  word  in  the  same  article  with  the  older 
word  cycle  (as  in  Tennyson's  "a  cycle  of  Cathay"), 
it  is  really  an  independent  formation,  which  would 
have  come  into  existence  even  if  the  other  word 
of  the  same  form  had  never  been  English. 

SHORTENING. 

The  substitution,  in  hurried,  careless,  jocular 
or  vulgar  speech,  of  a  part  of  a  word  for  the 
whole,  is  common  in  most  languages,  and  is 
especially  congenial  to  the  English  fondness  for 
brevity  of  utterance.  It  does  not,  by  itself, 
constitute  a  mode  of  word-formation  :  the  vulgar 
taters  and  bacca  io*  potatoes  and  tobacco,  cannot  be 
called  new  words,  any  more  than  any  other  mis- 


148  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

pronunciations  can  be  so  called.  But  when,  as 
very  often  happens,  the  original  word  and  its 
shortened  form  come  both  to  be  generally  used 
by  the  same  speakers  with  different  meanings,  or 
even  only  with  a  difference  in  the  implied  tone  of 
feeling,  a  real  addition  has  been  made  to  the 
vocabulary  of  the  language,  and  the  lexicographer 
is  bound  to  recognise  the  shortened  form  as  a 
distinct  word.  Shortening,  in  such  cases,  is  in  the 
strictest  sense,  a  kind  of  derivation  ;  and  it  is  a 
process  which  has  contributed  not  a  little  to 
increase  the  English  store  of  words. 

Even  when  the  abbreviated  form  expresses 
precisely  the  same  meaning  as  the  original  form, 
the  two  must  often  be  reckoned  as  separate  words, 
because  the  longer  form  is  reserved  for  more 
dignified  or  more  serious  use.  Omnibus  and  bus 
are  synonymous  in  the  sense  that  they  denote  the 
same  objects ;  but  they  are  not  absolute  synonyms, 
because  the  one  is  more  familiar  in  tone  than  the 
other  ;  the  two  are  used  on  different  occasions. 
The  same  thing  may  be  said  of  photograph  and 
photo^  or  bicycle  and  bike,  though  here  the  ab- 
breviated forms  are  not  universally  accepted  by 
educated  people  as  legitimate.  Sometimes  what 
was  at  first  only  a  jocular  abbreviation  has  ousted 
the  longer  form  from  general  use,  as  in  the  case  of 


iv.]  WORD-MAKING   IN   ENGLISH  149 

wig  for  periwig,  which  was  originally  an  altered 
pronunciation  of  peruke. 

But  very  frequently  a  word  which  has  teen 
formed  by  shortening  undergoes  a  sense-develop- 
ment of  its  own,  in  which  the  original  word  does 
not  share.  Even  if  anybody  is  pedantic  enough 
to  deny  that  bus  is  a  distinct  word  from  omnibus, 
he  cannot  refuse  to  admit  that  cab  is  a  real  word, 
though  it  was  originally  a  shortened  pronunciation 
of  cabriolet.  A  cab  and  a  cabriolet  are  not  the 
same  kind  of  vehicle  at  all.  So  too  Miss,  the 
title  given  to  an  unmarried  woman,  and  Mrs. 
(pronounced  Missis]  are  now  quite  different  in 
meaning  from  each  other,  and  from  mistress,  from 
which  both  are  derived  by  shortening.  There 
was  a  time  when  gent  was  used  by  educated 
people  as  a  familiar  abbreviation  for  gentleman, 
without  any  depreciatory  implication.  But  in 
this  use  it  was  gradually  discarded  from  the 
speech  of  the  upper  classes,  and  came  to  be  a 
contemptuous  designation  for  the  vulgar  pretenders 
to  gentility  in  whose  vocabulary  it  still  survived. 
Cit  is  a  similar  abbreviation  for  citizen  or  city  man, 
though  its  use  was  contemptuous  from  the  be- 
ginning. 

Some  words  that  originated  as  playful  abbrevi- 
ations of  other  words  are  now  used  without  any 


150  THE   MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

consciousness  of  their  origin.  Extra,  in  such 
phrases  as  '  an  extra  allowance,'  is  not  the  Latin 
word,  but  an  abbreviation  of  extraordinary.  An 
extra,  meaning  an  edition  of  a  newspaper  out  of 
the  usual  course,  was  at  one  time  called  '  an 
extraordinary'  Phiz  does  not,  to  most  people 
who  use  it,  call  up  any  recollection  of  physiognomy  ; 
and  only  students  of  etymology  know  that  chap  is 
a  shortening  of  chapman,  properly  meaning 
'  trader.' 

In  the  Middle  English  and  early  Modern 
English  periods  it  was  very  common,  in  the  hurry 
of  pronunciation,  to  drop  an  initial  vowel  which 
immediately  preceded  the  stressed  syllable  of  a 
word.  In  this  way  many  words  beginning  with 
a  vowel  came  to  have  an  alternative  form  from 
which  the  first  syllable  was  omitted  ;  and  almost 
in  every  case  in  which  both  forms  have  survived 
a  difference  of  meaning  has  been  developed. 
Assize  and  size  are  so  different  in  sense  that 
no  one  could  think  of  them  as  the  same  word, 
and  yet  the  one  is  only  a  shortened  pronunciation 
of  the  other.  The  standard  magnitude  of  an 
article  of  commerce  was  settled  by  an  '  assize '  or 
sitting  of  some  constituted  authority.  Hence  the 
standard  or  authorized  magnitude  of  anything  was 
called  its  assize  or  size,  and  afterwards  the  latter 


iv.]  WORD-MAKING  IN  ENGLISH  151 

form  came  to  mean  magnitude  in  general.  Tend, 
as  in  the  phrase  '  to  tend  the  sick/  was  origin- 
ally the  same  word  as  attend',  but  the  two  verbs 
are  no  longer  synonymous.  Alone,  which  stands 
for  an  earlier  all  one,  was  in  the  Elizabethan 
period  shortened  into  lone  when  used  as  an 
adjective.  The  Middle-English  phrase  on  live, 
equivalent  to  '  in  life,'  was  commonly  pronounced 
alive,  and  this,  by  shortening,  afterwards  yielded 
the  adjective  live.  Mend  was  originally  the 
same  word  as  amend.  The  shorter  form,  as 
usual,  serves  for  the  trivial  occasions  of  ordinary 
life,  while  the  longer  form  is  of  more  dignified 
application.  We  speak  of  mending  a  stocking, 
but  of  amending  an  Act  of  Parliament  Some- 
times other  prefixes  than  those  consisting  only 
of  a  vowel  were  dropped  in  the  same  way.  The 
verb  to  vie  is  shortened  from  envie — not  the  same 
word  as  the  modern  envy,  but  adopted  from  the 
French  envier,  which  comes  from  the  Latin 
invitare  to  challenge ;  so  that  vie  and  invite  are 
in  ultimate  etymology  the  same.  Fence  is  defence 
without  its  prefix  ;  and  fend,  from  which  fender 
is  derived,  is  short  for  defend.  Several  words 
that  originally  began  with  dis-  or  des-  now  begin 
with  s.  Stain  is  a  shorter  form  of  distain,  which 
is  the  Old  French  desteindre,  to  take  out  the  dye 


152  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

of  anything,  from  the  prefix  des-,  dis-,  and  teindre 
to  dye.  Despite,  from  the  Old  French  despit, 
the  Latin  despectus,  a  looking  down,  despising, 
has  become  spite.  No  word  now  sounds  more 
thoroughly  English  than  sport,  which  has,  indeed, 
been  adopted  from  English  into  foreign  languages ; 
yet  it  is  a  shortening  of  disport,  which  is  a  word 
of  French  origin.  To  '  disport  oneself  is,  literally 
interpreted,  '  to  carry  oneself  in  a  different  direc- 
tion '  from  that  of  one's  ordinary  business  ;  and 
hence  disport  and  sport  came  to  mean  amusement 
or  pastime. 

Besides  the  new  words  that  owe  their  origin 
to  shortening  in  pronunciation,  there  are  others 
which  have  arisen  out  of  abbreviations  used  in 
writing.  Sometimes  the  mere  initials  of  a  phrase 
come  to  be  treated  as  a  word,  the  written  letters 
being  represented  in  pronunciation  by  their  names. 
Thus  we  speak  of  '  a  question  of  £  s.  d.  (el  ess 
dee) ' ;  or,  again,  of  '  an  M.P.  (em  pee\'  or  '  a 
D.C.L.  (dee  cee  et)'  meaning  a  person  who  is 
entitled  to  write  those  initials  after  his  name. 
Sometimes,  again,  a  word  or  phrase  as  abbreviated 
in  writing  happens  to  yield  a  pronounceable 
sequence  of  letters,  and  takes  its  place  in  the 
language  as  a  word.  This  occurs  most  fre^ 
quently  with  Latin  phrases.  Many  of  the 


iv.]  WORD-MAKING   IN   ENGLISH  153 

shortened  forms  are  vulgar  or  jocular,  as  infra 
dig,  incog,  nem.  con.,  'the  pros  and  cons!  But 
per  cent,  cent  pet  cent,  from  the  Latin  (centum) 
per  centum,  are  part  of  the  ordinary  English 
vocabulary.  The  most  curious  instance  of  the 
formation  of  a  word  by  this  process  is  culprit. 
Its  origin  is  to  be  found  in  the  strange  corrupt 
Norman  French  once  used  in  our  courts  of 
justice.  When  a  prisoner  had  pleaded  'not  guilty,' 
the  reply  made  on  behalf  of  the  Crown  was 
'  culpable  ;  prest.'  This  meant  '  (he  is)  guilty, 
(and  we  are)  ready  (to  prove  it).'  In  the  reports 
of  criminal  cases  the  phrase  was  commonly 
abbreviated  cut.  prest,  and  afterwards  corruptly 
cut.  prit.  Then  in  some  way,  not  very  clearly 
understood,  it  seems  to  have  come  about  that 
the  clerks  of  the  Crown,  modelling  their  pro- 
cedure on  the  pattern  set  in  the  written  reports, 
fell  into  the  practice  of  using  the  syllables  cut 
prit  as  an  oral  formula ;  and  as  this  formula 
was  followed  by  the  question,  '  How  will  you  be 
tried  ? '  addressed  to  the  prisoner,  it  was  popularly 
apprehended  to  mean  '  guilty  man.'  The  custom 
survived  in  the  courts  down  to  the  eighteenth 
century ;  but  when  culprit  became  a  current 
word  with  a  new  sense,  it  was  probably  felt 
that  there  was  an  injustice  in  addressing  a 


154  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

prisoner    by  a    term    which    presumed    his    guilt, 
and  the  use  of  the  formula  was  discontinued 


§  3.  Root-Creation. 

Perhaps  few,  even  among  professed  students 
of  language,  are  aware  how  large  a  portion  of 
the  English  vocabulary  has,  in  the  ordinary  sense 
of  the  word,  no  etymology  at  all.  We  do  not 
mean  merely  that  there  are  many  words  the 
origin  of  which  is  and  will  always  remain  un- 
known because  of  the  imperfection  of  our  means 
of  discovery.  This  is  no  doubt  quite  true.  But 
there  are  also  many  words  which  were  neither 
inherited  from  Old  English,  nor  adopted  from 
any  foreign  language,  nor  formed  out  of  any 
older  English  or  foreign  words  by  any  process 
of  composition  or  derivation.  It  is  to  instances 
of  this  kind  that  the  name  of  '  root-creation ' 
may  be  fitly  applied. 

One  of  the  principal  forms  of  root-creation  is 
that  which  is  known  by  the  name  of  Onomato- 
poeia. The  word  is  Greek,  and  literally  means 
'  name-making.'  It  was  used  by  the  Greeks  to 
express  the  fact  (common  in  their  own  as  in 
other  languages)  that  a  noise,  or  the  object 
producing  it,  sometimes  makes  its  own  name : 


IV.]  WORD-MAKING   IN   ENGLISH  155 

that  is  to  say,  is  denoted  by  a  word  formed  in 
imitation  of  the  sound. 

The  number  of  '  echoic '  words  (as  they  have 
been  called  by  Dr.  Murray)  which  have  arisen 
in  Middle  and  Modern  English  is  very  con- 
siderable. We  may  mention  as  examples  bang, 
boo,  boom,  cackle,  cheep,  fizz,  gibber,  giggle,  hiss, 
hum,  mumble,  pop,  quack,  rumble,  simmer,  sizzle, 
titter,  twitter,  whirr,  whiz,  whip-poor-will,  and  the 
reduplicated  words  bow-wow,  ding-dong,  -flip-flop 
hee-haw,  ping-pong,  pom-pom,  rub-a-dub,  tick-tack. 

It  is  possible  that  some  of  the  words  in  the 
first  part  of  this  list  may  go  back  to  Old  English  ; 
words  of  this  kind  are  much  more  common  in 
speech  than  in  literature,  and  we  are  certainly 
far  from  knowing  the  whole  of  the  Old  English 
vocabulary.  However,  even  if  they  are  much 
older  than  they  can  be  proved  to  be,  there  is 
no  doubt  that  they  are  imitative  in  origin. 

The  imitation  of  inarticulate  by  articulate 
sounds  can  never  be  accurate.  Perhaps  one  or 
two  birds  do  really  '  make  their  names ' ;  though 
even  in  the  case  of  the  cuckoo  it  is  not  quite 
certain  that  we  actually  hear  the  two  consonants. 
But  the  cries  of  birds  and  animals,  produced  by 
organs  having  more  or  less  similarity  to  our  own, 
may  be  regarded  as  in  some  measure  articulate. 


156  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

In  general  the  rendering  of  noises  into  the  sounds 
of  human  speech  involves  some  play  of  fancy, 
like  that  which  is  exercised  when  we  see  faces  in 
the  fire,  or  landscapes  in  the  clouds.  The  resem- 
blance which  an  imitative  word  is  felt  to  bear  to 
the  inarticulate  noise  which  it  names  consists  not 
so  much  in  similarity  of 'impression  on  the  ear  as 
in  similarity  of  mental  suggestion.  For  instance, 
it  is  not  at  all  literally  true  that  a  gun,  or  a 
heavy  body  impinging  on  a  door,  '  says  bang! 
But  the  sequence  of  three  sounds  of  which  the 
word  consists  is  of  such  a  nature  that  it  can 
easily  be  uttered  with  force,  so  as  to  suggest  the 
startling  effect  of  a  sudden  violent  noise,  while 
the  final  consonant  admits  of  being  prolonged  to 
express  the  notion  of  a  continued  resonance.  In 
this  instance  and  in  many  others,  the  so-called 
'  imitative '  word  represents  an  inarticulate  noise 
not  so  much  by  way  of  an  echo  as  symbolically. 
That  is  to  say,  the  elements  composing  the  sound 
of  the  word  combine  to  produce  a  mental  effect 
which  we  recognise  as  analogous  to  that  produced 
by  the  noise. 

In  much  the  same  way,  the  sound  of  a  word 
may  suggest  '  symbolically '  a  particular  kind  of 
movement  or  a  particular  shape  of  an  object. 
We  often  feel  that  a  word  has  a  peculiar  natural 


iv.]  WORD-MAKING  IN   ENGLISH  157 

fitness  for  expressing  its  meaning,  though  it  is 
not  always  possible  to  tell  why  we  have  this 
feeling,  and  the  reasons,  when  we  can  trace 
them,  are  different  in  different  cases.  Sometimes 
the  notion  of  natural  fitness  is  an  illusion,  due  to 
the  fact  that  the  word  obscurely  reminds  us  of 
the  sound  of  several  other  words  which  happen  to 
have  meanings  somewhat  similar  to  that  which 
it  expresses.  But  quite  often  the  sound  of  a 
word  has  a  real  intrinsic  significance.  For 
instance,  a  word  with  long  vowels,  which  we 
naturally  utter  slowly,  suggests  the  idea  of  slow 
movement.  A  repetition  of  the  same  consonant 
suggests  a  repetition  of  movement,  slow  if  the 
vowels  be  long,  and  rapid  if  the  vowels  be  short. 
The  vowels  that  are  produced  by  the  passage  of 
the  breath  through  a  narrow  opening,  such  as  ee 
or  £,  are  suited  to  convey  the  notion  of  something 
slender  or  slight,  while  a  full  vowel  such  as  oo 
suggests  a  massive  object.  A  syllable  ending  in 
a  stopped  consonant,  especially  an  unvoiced  one 
like  /,  t,  k,  preceded  by  a  short  vowel,  affords  a 
natural  expression  for  the  idea  of  some  quick  and 
abrupt  action.  Sequences  of  consonants  which 
are  harsh  to  the  ear,  or  involve  difficult  muscular 
effort  in  utterance,  are  felt  to  be  appropriate  In 
words  descriptive  of  harsh  or  violent  movement. 


158  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

It  would  be  possible  to  say  a  great  deal  more 
about  the  inherent  symbolism  of  sounds  ;  but  it 
is  not  necessaiy  here  to  pursue  the  subject  in 
further  detail.  The  point  that  needs  to  be  re- 
marked is  that  this  phonetic  symbolism  (which 
probably  had  a  large  share  in  the  primary  origin 
of  human  language)  has  led  to  a  very  large 
amount  of  root-creation  in  Middle  and  Modern 
English.  It  is  worthy  of  note  that  many  of  the 
words  that  have  in  this  way  been  invented  as 
instinctive  descriptions  of  action  or  form  occur 
in  groups  of  two  or  three,  in  which  the  consonants 
are  alike,  while  the  vowel  is  varied  to  express 
differences  of  mental  effect.  Thus  we  have  bleb, 
blob,  blub-cheeked,  all  denoting  something  inflated. 
The  initial  bl  was  perhaps  suggested  by  the  verb 
bloiff^  the  pronunciation  of  the  syllables  involves 
an  inflation  of  the  cheeks  which  is  symbolical 
of  the  notion  common  to  the  three  words,  and 
the  different  degrees  of  fullness  in  the  vowels  are 
obviously  significant  of  differences  of  size  in  the 
object  denoted.  Other  instances  in  which  the 
notion  expressed  by  the  consonantal  skeleton  is 
modified  by  difference  in  the  vowel  are  jiggle, 
j°ggle  >  flipi  flaP->  fl°P  >'  chip,  chap,  chop  ;  fimble, 
f amble,  fumble  ;  flash,  flush. 

Among  the  many  words  that  owe  their  origin 


iv.]  WORD-MAKING  IN  ENGLISH  159 

to  a  sense  of  the  intrinsic  expressiveness  of  par- 
ticular combinations  of  sounds  are  bob,  brob, 
bunch,  dab,  dodder,  fiddle-faddle,  fidge,  fidget, 
flabbergast,  fudge,  hug,  hugger-mugger,  hump,  jog, 
see-saw,  squander,  squelch,  throb,  thump,  thwack, 
twiddle,  wobble.  Some  of  these,  it  is  true,  may 
in  a  certain  sense  be  said  to  have  an  etymology ; 
but  their  actual  meaning  is  not  due  to  the 
word,  native  or  foreign,  that  may  have  suggested 
their  formation  in  the  first  instance,  but  to  the 
impression  which  is  made  by  their  mere  sound. 
Many  excellent  examples  of  intentional  root- 
creation  may  be  found  among  the  invented  words 
(not  intended  to  be  permanent  additions  to  the 
language)  in  Lewis  Carroll's  Alice  in  Wonderland, 
Through  the  Looking-glass,  and  The  Hunting  of 
the  Snark.  These  clever  coinages  derive  their 
effect  partly  from  their  suggestion  of  obscure 
reminiscences  of  existing  words,  and  partly  from 
real  phonetic  expressiveness.  Two  of  them, 
galumphing  and  the  verb  to  chortle,  have  come 
into  pretty  general  use,  and  have  found  their 
way  into  our  dictionaries. 


CHAPTER  V. 
CHANGES  OF  MEANING. 

IN  our  discussion  of  the  changes  which  the 
English  language  has  undergone,  we  have 
hitherto  spoken  only  of  those  which  relate  to  its 
grammatical  structure,  and  those  which  consist 
in  the  addition  of  new  words  to  its  vocabu- 
lary. We  have  yet  to  speak  of  another  class 
of -changes,  not  less  important,  though  less  con- 
spicuous, than  these  :  the  changes,  that  is  to  say, 
which  have  taken  place  in  the  meaning  of  words. 
The  gradual  change  of  signification  in  words 
is  a  universal  feature  of  human  language ;  and 
it  is  not  difficult  to  see  why  it  is  so.  Even 
the  richest  vocabulary  must,  in  the  nature  of 
things,  be  inadequate  to  represent  the  inexhaus- 
tible variety  of  possible  distinctions  in  thought. 
.We  can  meet  the  continually  occurring  neces- 
sities of  expression  only  by  using  words  in 


CH.  v.j  CHANGES   OF  MEANING  161 

temporary  deviations  from  their  ordinary  senses. 
The  dullest  and  most  prosaic  persons  do  this, 
of  necessity  and  often  unconsciously  ;  those  who 
have  wit  and  imagination  do  it  more  freely  and 
more  effectively.  Very  often  these  novelties  of 
meaning  do  not  survive  the  temporary  occasion 
which  gave  them  birth ;  but  when  a  new  appli- 
cation of  a  word  happens  to  supply  a  generally 
felt  want  it  becomes  a  permanent  part  of  the 
language,  and  may  in  its  turn,  by  a  repetition  of 
the  same  process,  give  rise  to  other  senses  still 
more  remote  from  the  original  meaning.  Some- 
times the  primary  sense  remains  in  use  along 
with  the  senses  derived  from  it ;  sometimes 
it  dies  out,  so  that  the  word  has  exchanged 
its  old  meaning  for  a  number  of  new  ones. 

It  is  owing  to  such  progressive  changes  that 
so  many  of  our  words  now  bear  two  or  more 
senses  that  are  altogether  dissimilar,  and  some- 
times even  contradictory.  If,  for  instance,  we 
turn  to  an  ordinary  dictionary  for  the  senses  of 
the  adjective  fast,  we  find  that  one  of  them  is 
'  immovable,  and  another  is  '  rapid  in  motion.' 
It  would  be  obviously  absurd  to  suppose  that 
from  the  beginning  one  and  the  same  word 
can  have  expressed  two  notions  so  entirely 
opposite.  If  we  had  no  evidence  to  the  contrary, 


162  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

we  might  guess  that  two  originally  distinct 
words  had,  in  consequence  of  sound-change, 
come  to  be  pronounced  alike.  There  are  many 
apparently  similar  cases  in  which  this  explana- 
tion would  be  the  true  one  ;  but  in  the  case  of 
fast  it  is  the  meaning  and  not  the  sound  that 
has  altered,  and  the  alteration  is  quite  easy  to 
account  for.  The  primary  sense  of  fast  is  '  firm, 
immovable.'  But  the  notion  of  firmness,  which 
appears  in  the  expression  '  to  stand  fast,'  was 
developed,  by  an  easy  transition,  into  that  of 
strength  and  unwavering  persistence  in  move- 
ment. Hence  it  became  possible  to  speak  of 
'running  fast.'  The  adverb  in  this  connexion 
originally  meant  '  without  slackening ' ;  but  when 
it  had  acquired  this  meaning,  it  was  natural  that 
it  should  pass  into  the  modern  sense  '  rapidly.' 
A  later  development  of  this  sense  is  exemplified 
when  we  speak  of  '  living  too  fast.'  '  A  fast 
liver'  and  'a  loose  liver'  are  expressions  practically 
equivalent,  although  originally,  and  still  in  other 
connexions,  the  two  adjectives  are  exactly  oppo- 
site in  sense. 

The  adjective  fine  affords  another  instance  of 
a  development  that  has  issued  in  senses  that 
appear  mutually  contradictory.  It  sometimes 
means  '  slender '  or  '  small,'  as  in  'a  fine 


CHANGES   OF  MEANING 


163 


needle,'  'fine  grains,'  and  sometimes  it  means 
the  very  opposite.  A  character  in  a  modern 
novel  says  :  "  He  is  not  a  fine  child,  for  he 
is  remarkably  small  ;  but  he  is  a  very  pretty 
one."  The  original  sense  of  the  word  is 
'highly  finished.'  As  the  result  of  high  finish 
is  often  to  render  the  object  worked  upon 
delicate  or  slender,  the  adjective  came  in  cer- 
tain applications  to  denote  these  qualities,  even 
when  they  are  not  the  result  of  any  process  of 
elaboration.  On  the  other  hand,  the  notion  of 
high  finish  naturally  passed  into  that  of  beauty. 
Hence  the  word  was  used  as  a  general  expression 
of  admiration  ;  and  in  cases  where  large  growth 
is  a  quality  to  be  admired  it  practically  assumes 
the  sense  of  '  large.' 

These  curious  phenomena  might,  perhaps,  be 
paralleled  in  other  languages ;  and  even  in 
English  it  is  seldom  that  the  development  of 
senses  has  given  rise  to  absolutely  contradictory 
meanings  for  the  same  word.  But  the  same 
causes  which,  as  we  have  seen,  have  produced 
an  exceptionally  large  amount  of  change  in 
the  grammar  and  in  the  vocabulary  of  English, 
have  had  a  similar  effect  in  the  department  of 
signification.  Although  we  continue  to  use  some 
thousands  of  words  that  already  existed  in  Old 


i64  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

English,  there  are  comparatively  few  of  them 
which  now  mean  neither  more  or  less  than 
they  did  a  thousand  years  ago.  When  we 
compare  modern  English  with  modern  German, 
we  find  that  very  often  the  Germans  continue 
to  use  a  word  in  its  oldest  sense,  while  in  our 
language  its  meaning  is  something  strangely 
different.  We  will  give  a  few  examples. 

The  adjective  sad  had  in  Old  English  the 
sense  of  the  corresponding  German  satt,  satiated, 
full  to  repletion,  having  had  all  that  one  wants 
of  anything.  This  continued  to  be  the  mean- 
ing of  the  word  down  to  the  fourteenth  century. 
"  Selden  am  I  sad  that  semli  for  to  se " 
(seldom  do  I  have  my  fill  of  beholding  that 
fair  one),  says  a  poet  of  the  days  of  Edward 
II.  But  a  person  who  has  satisfied  his  desire 
for  pleasure  has  lost  his  restlessness  and  excita- 
bility ;  he  has  become  calm  and  serious,  and 
more  likely  to  attend  steadily  to  the  business 
of  life.  Hence  in  Chaucer's  writings  we  find 
the  word  sq/d  has  acquired  the  senses  of  'calm,' 
'  serious,'  '  trustworthy.'  In  Shakspere  it  often 
means  '  serious '  as  opposed  to  trifling  or  merry. 
"  A  jest  with  a  sad  brow,"  "  in  good  sadness," 
are  well-known  examples  of  this  use.  But 
already  in  Shakspere  there  are  many  instances, 


v.]  CHANGES  OF  MEANING  165 

such  as  "  your  sad  heart  tires  in  a  mile-a,"  in 
which  the'  sense  of  sad  has  been  developed 
through  its  use  as  the  opposite  of 'merry';  and  in 
the  seventeenth  century  the  word  became  restricted 
in  its  present  meaning  of  '  mournful.'  The 
midland  and  northern  dialects  of  English  show 
a  curious  side-development  of  the  meaning  of 
this  word.  By  analogy  with  its  use  in  describ- 
ing persons  who  were  serious  and  not  easily 
moved,  it  has  come  to  be  applied  to  material 
substances  in  the  sense  of  solid  or  compact. 
In  Yorkshire,  '  sad  bread '  is  bread  that  has  not 
'  risen '  properly,  and  is  therefore  not  light  or 
spongy,  as  good  bread  ought  to'  be.  The 
derived  verb  '  to  sad  down '  means  to  press 
something  down,  so  as  to  make  it  more  com- 
pact ;  and  hence  the  ironmonger's  trade  name 
for  a  smoothing-iron  is  sad-iron. 

The  original  sense  of  glad  has  been  preserved 
unaltered  by  the  German  equivalent  glatt,  which 
means  '  smooth.'  In  Old  English  (as  also  in 
Old  Norse)  this  meaning  had  already  ceased  to 
be  current  ;  but  the  word  was  still  used  for 
'  shining '  or  *  bright,'  as  applied,  for  instance,  to 
gold,  silver,  jewels,  and  light.  This  was  obviously 
quite  a  natural  development  from  its  primitive 
sense,  for  we  make  things  shine  by  rubbing'  them 


166  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

smooth.  It  was  equally  natural  that  the  sense 
of  *  bright '  should  pass  into  that  of  '  cheerful '  or 
'joyous,'  as  it  did  already  in  Old  English. 
The  word  has  now  quite  lost  its  old  physical 
applications,  and,  so  far  as  plain  prose  is  con- 
cerned, its  figurative  meaning  has  undergone 
some  narrowing.  Poets  and  rhetorical  writers 
carr  still  speak  of  '  a  glad  spirit,'  '  a  glad 
landscape '  ;  but  in  ordinary  talk  we  express 
this  notion  by  other  words,  such  as  joyous, 
joyful^  cheerful^  happy  >  while  glad  is  used  only  to 
characterize  the  state  of  feeling  pleasure  for 
some  specified  cause. 

The  German  Zaun  still  retains  its  original 
sense  of  something  that  encloses,  though  the 
meaning  is  now  confined  to  the  special  application 
'  hedge.'  In  Old  English  tun  (which  is  the  older 
form  of  Zaun)  meant  a  piece  of  ground  enclosed  by 
a  fence,  and  specifically  a  farm  with  the  buildings 
upon  it.  The  Old  English  farm-houses,  sur- 
rounded by  the  cottages  of  the  labourers,  developed 
gradually  into  villages,  and  some  of  these,  in 
process  of  time,  grew  into  still  larger  collections 
of  habitations.  Thus  the  word  tun  (in  modern 
English  town}  has  gradually  changed  its  meaning. 
From  being  applied  to  a  single  farm,  it  came 
to  denote  a  collection  of  houses  (the  many  place- 


v.]  CHANGES  OF  MEANING  167 

names  ending  in  -ton  remain  as  evidence  of  this 
stage  in  its  history),  and  finally  (when  it  had  been 
superseded  in  its  humbler  applications  by  the 
French  word  village]  it  survived  only  as  the 
designation  of  an  assemblage  of  dwellings  larger 
and  more  important  than  a  village.  But,  as 
readers  of  Waverley  will  remember,  the  Scottish 
dialect  has  retained  toun  in  the  ancient  sense  as 
applied  to  a  farm-house  and  its  appurtenances. 

Again,  we  still  find  in  modern  German  the 
original  senses,  or  nearly  so,  of  the  verbs  write 
and  read)  which  in  English  are  used  only  in 
senses  very  remote  from  their  primitive  use. 
Write  is  the  same  word  as  the  German  reiszen, 
to  jear.  In  the  early  Germanic  tongue  it  meant 
not  only  '  to  tear,'  but  '  to  scratch ' ;  and  in  pre- 
historic Old  English  it  was  specifically  applied  to 
the  act  of  scratching  '  runes '  on  a  piece  of  wood 
or  stone,  and  afterwards  it  was  extended  to  include 
the  action — identical  in  purpose  though  not  in 
form — of  marking  a  piece  of  parchment  or  other 
material  with  signs  that  corresponded  to  spoken 
words.  This  use  of  the  word  became  so  im- 
portant that  its  original  sense  was  quite  forgotten, 
and  does  not  occur  at  all  in  Old  English  litera- 
ture. A  word  was  needed  to  describe  the  action 
of  interpreting  the  meaning  of  written  characters ; 


168  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

and  our  ancestors  supplied  the  want  by  using  the 
verb  read  (in  Old  English  rwdari),  which  meant, 
like  its  modern  German  equivalent  rathen,  to  guess 
a  riddle.  The  noun  riddle  (in  Old  English  rTedels] 
is  a  derivative  of  this  word.  To  the  early  English  a 
piece  of  writing  was,  we  see,  a  mystery  which  only 
the  wise  could  solve.  The  new  sense  of  the  word 
did  jiot,  as  in  the  case  of  write,  at  once  drive  out 
the  older  one :  indeed  '  to  read  a  riddle '  still 
occurs  in  literature,  though  it  is  no  longer  used  in 
ordinary  speech.  The  German  rathen,  by  the 
way,  means  not  only  to  guess,  but  to  advise.  In 
poetry,  and  in  the  Scottish  dialect,  rede  still  has 
this  meaning,  but  we  now  regard  it  as  a  different 
word  from  read,  and  distinguish  the  two  by  an 
arbitrary  variation  in  spelling. 

The  English  tide  is  the  same  word  as  the 
German  Zeit,  and  in  Old  English  it  had  the  same 
meaning,  namely  '  time.'1  But  in  Middle  English 
its  application  was  restricted,  so  that  it  meant 
chiefly  the  time  of  the  periodical  rise  or  fall  of  the 
sea ;  and  afterwards  it  was  used  to  supply  the 
want  of  a  name  for  these  phenomena  themselves. 
As  the  older  sense  was  sufficiently  expressed  by 
the  synonym  time,  the  word  could  be  set  free  for 
its  new  purpose. 

1  Preserved  in  Christmastide,  Shrovetide,  Whitsuntide, 


v.]  CHANGES  OF  MEANING  169 

There  are  many  other  instances  in  which  Ger- 
man has  retained  the  primary  sense  of  a  word, 
while  English  has  exchanged  it  for  one  that  is 
widely  different.  And  even  when  the  two  lan- 
guages agree  in  using  a  word  in  its  original 
meaning,  it  will  commonly  be  found  that  in 
English  it  has  acquired  a  number  of  additional 
senses  which  in  German  it  has  not.  There  is,  it 
is  true,  no  lack  of  examples  of  an  opposite  kind  * ; 
indeed  very  few  German  words  have  lasted  a 
thousand  years  without  gaining  new  meanings  or 
losing  old  ones.  But  it  may  perhaps  be  said  that 
there  has  been  in  English  a  far  greater  abundance 
than  in  German  of  those  extreme  changes  by 
which  a  word  comes  to  express  a  variety  of 
notions  that  seem  to  have  nothing  whatever  in 
common  ;  and  such  changes  have  been  hardly  less 
frequent  in  the  part  of  the  vocabulary  adopted 
from  French  and  Latin  than  in  that  which  is 
inherited  from  Old  English. 

The  changes  of  signification  in  English  words 
would  of  themselves  furnish  material  for  a  large 
volume.  In  one  brief  chapter  it  is  impossible  to 
treat  the  subject  systematically,  even  in  outline. 

For  instance,  the  English  clean  and  foul  have  their  original 
Germanic  senses;  but  in  German  klein  has  come  to  mean  'little,' 
andya«/  'idle.'  rr  £+ 


170  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

We  shall  therefore  attempt  nothing  more  than  to 
call  attention,  in  a  somewhat  desultory  manner, 
to  a  few  out  of  the  many  causes  that  have  been 
operative  in  the  development  of  new  meanings, 
and  in  the  disappearance  of  meanings  that  were 
formerly  current.  Additional  illustrations  of  the 
principles  set  forth  may  be  found  on  almost  every 
page  of  the  Oxford  English  Dictionary,  a  work 
which  attempts  to  trace  the  history  of  every  word 
in  the  language  from  its  earliest  appearance. 

When  we  wish  to  express  some  notion  for 
which  we  know  no  exact  word,  our  easiest 
resource  commonly  is  to  use  the  word  that 
stands  for  whatever  other  idea  strikes  us  as 
most  like  that  which  we  have  in  our  mind. 
This  process  accounts  for  a  very  great  pro- 
portion of  the  new  meanings  that  words  acquire. 
The  nature  of  the  likeness  perceived  or  fancied 
differs  in  different  cases.  If  it  is  a  material 
thing  that  we  wish  to  find  a  name  for,  the 
resemblance  that  helps  us  may  be  in  form  or 
appearance,  as  when  we  speak  of  the  eye  of  a 
needle ;  or  in  some  physical  quality,  as  when 
the  hard  kernel  of  certain  fruits  is  called  a  stone ; 
or  in  relative  position,  as  when  the  top  and 
bottom  of  a  page  are  called  the  head  and  foot ; 


v.]  CHANGES  OF  MEANING  171 

or  in  use  or  function,  as  when  the  index  of  a 
clock-dial  is  called  a  hand,  because  it  serves  to 
point  to  something.  Sometimes  two  or  more  of 
these  kinds  of  resemblance  are  combined :  the 
ear  of  a  pitcher  is  something  like  a  human  ear 
both  in  form  and  in  position  ;  in  some  English 
dialects  the  index  of  a  clock  is  called  not  hand 
but  finger,  because  it  resembles  a  finger  in  form 
as  well  as  function.  Thousands  of  English 
substantives  have  in  this  way  been  provided 
with  new  senses.  The  word  chest  in  Old  English, 
and  until  the  sixteenth  century,  meant  merely  a 
box ;  it  has  since  become  the  name  for  that 
part  of  the  body  which  contains  the  lungs  and 
heart.  A  needle,  as  its  etymology  indicates 
(compare  the  German  nahen,  to  sew),  is  primarily 
a  tool  for  sewing  ;  but  we  now  apply  the  word 
to  many  things,  such  as  the  magnetized  bar  of 
a  compass,  which  resemble  a  sewing  needle  in 
shape.  The  name  of  horse  has  been  given  to 
various  mechanical  contrivances  which,  like  the 
animal,  are  used  to  carry  or  support  something. 
The  key  with  which  we  wind  up  a  watch  is 
so  called,  not  because  it  resembles  in  shape  or 
purpose  the  instrument  with  which  we  lock  or 
unlock  a  door,  but  because  in  using  it  we  turn 
it  round  as  we  turn  a  key  in  the  lock.  Nearly 


172  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

all  the  words  denoting  parts  of  the  body 
have,  as  our  dictionaries  show,  acquired  a  host 
of  additional  senses,  because  they  have  been 
applied  to  things  that  were  thought  to  resemble 
in  one  way  or  other  the  organs  or  members  to 
which  the  names  originally  belonged. 

^he  foregoing  illustrations  have  been  confined 
to  instances  in  which  the  name  of  one  material 
thing  has  been  transferred  to  another  material 
thing  that  has  been  thought  to  resemble  it.  But 
the  perception  of  resemblance,  as  a  source  of 
new  signification  of  words,  has  been  far  more 
widely  operative  than  these  examples  indicate. 
We  are  constantly  finding  that  some  immaterial 
object  has  a  sort  of  likeness,  not  always  clearly 
definable,  to  some  other  object,  either  material 
or  immaterial,  and  so  we  use  the  name  of  the 
one  to  signify  the  other.  Among  qualities,  con- 
ditions, and  actions,  we  perceive  similarities,  either 
in  themselves,  or  in  their  results,  or  in  the 
feelings  with  which  we  regard  them  ;  and  the 
words  that  express  them,  whether  nouns,  ad- 
jectives, or  verbs,  often  acquire  new  meanings 
in  consequence.  When  we  speak  of  the  book 
of  nature,  the  key  to  a  mystery,  the  light  of 
knowledge ;  when  we  describe  a  sound,  a  person's 
manner,  or  the  conditions  of  one's  life,  as  rough 


v.]  CHANGES  OF  MEANING  173 

or  smooth ;  when  we  say  that  time  flies,  that 
anger  burns,  that  commerce  flourishes :  we  are 
using  words  in  senses  which  we  well  know  not 
to  be  their  original  senses,  but  which  we  feel 
to  be  justified  by  resemblances  that  are  in- 
stinctively perceived,  though  many  words  might 
be  needed  to  explain  wherein  they  consist.  In 
English,  as  in  all  other  languages,  this  habit  of 
metaphorical  expression  has  played  a  large  part 
in  the  development  of  the  signification  of  words. 
It  is  hardly  necessary  to  dwell  on  the  well- 
known  fact  that  most  of  the  words  that  are 
now  used  to  describe  mental  states  or  qualities 
have  obtained  these  meanings  through  meta- 
phorical use,  their  earlier  sense  having  been 
purely  physical.  This  is,  indeed,  the  ordinary 
course  of  development  in  all  languages.  But 
the  history  of  the  English  language  affords 
examples  also  of  the  contrary  process.  In  Old 
English,  the  adjective  keen  could  be  used  only 
of  persons.  It  had  the  same  sense  as  the 
German  ktihn,  daring,  bold,  though  it  also  had 
the  meaning  of 'wise'  or  'clever.'  In  the  thirteenth 
century  the  word  that  expressed  the  attribute 
of  the  warrior  was  applied  to  his  sword.  The 
physical  sense,  '  sharp,  cutting,'  rapidly  became 
prominent,  and  the  original  meaning  fell  out  of 


174  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

use.  Although  we  can  now  speak  of  a  keen 
thinker  or  fighter,  these  applications  of  the 
word  are  not  inherited  from  Old  English,  but 
are  metaphorical  uses  of  the  physical  sense. 
The  opposite  of  keen,  as  applied  to  a  blade,  is 
dull ;  and  when  we  speak  of  '  a  dull  wit,'  '  a 
dull  brain,'  we  perhaps  always  have  in  our 
minds  more  or  less  the  notion  of  a  blunted 
edge.  But  in  early  Middle  English  dull  could 
only  be  said  of  persons  or  their  qualities.  It 
is  related  to  the  Old  English  dol,  foolish  (cor- 
responding etymologically  to  the  German  toll, 
mad),  and  it  expressed  primarily  want  of  intel- 
lect or  animation.  It  was  not  until  the  fifteenth 
century  that  it  could  be  used  of  the  edge  of 
a  knife  ;  and  the  application  to  colour  or  light 
is  of  equally  late  development. 

The  motive  for  using  words  in  new  senses  is 
not  always  that  there  is  any  difficulty  in  ex- 
pressing the  required  meaning  without  such  an 
expedient.  It  is  very  often  merely  a  desire  for 
freshness  and  vivacity  of  expression.  Few 
people  are  content  always  to  say  things  in  the 
most  obvious  way :  an  accustomed  word  some- 
times seems  to  lose  its  force  through  familiar- 
ity, and  the  substitution  of  a  picturesque  or 
ludicrous  metaphor  enlivens  the  dulness  of 


v.J  CHANGES   OF   MEANING  175 

ordinary  straightforward  speech.  This  impulse 
accounts  for  the  growth  of  what  we  call  slang. 
The  substitution  of  nut  for  'head'  is  a  typical 
instance  of  it  In  some  languages  a  large 
number  of  words  originally  slang  have  displaced 
their  more  respectable  synonyms.  For  example, 
in  vulgar  Latin  testa  (pot  or  shell)  was  used  instead 
of  caput  (head),  and  this  is  the  reason  why  the 
Italian  and  French  words  for  head  are  testa 
and  tete.  Although  the  serious  vocabulary  of 
English  has  not  been  so  much  influenced  by 
slang  as  that  of  some  other  tongues,  there  are 
some  instances  in  which  the  older  words  ex- 
pressing certain  meanings  have  been  superseded 
by  jocular  perversions  of  the  use  of  other  words. 
In  particular,  there  has  been  a  curious  tendency 
to  grow  dissatisfied  with  the  tameness  of  the 
verbs  denoting  violent  actions,  such  as  throw- 
ing or  dealing  blows,  and  to  substitute  more 
emphatic  synonyms.  The  Old  English  word 
for  '  to  throw '  was  iveorpan,  identical  with  the 
German  werfen.  The  Germans  have  been  con- 
tent to  keep  the  old  verb  in  use ;  but  in 
English  it  was  superseded  by  cast  (adopted 
from  Old  Norse),  and  this  in  its  turn  by 
throw  (corresponding  to  the  German  dreheri), 
which  properly  meant  to  twist  or  wrench.  In 


1 76  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

many  rustic  dialects  throw  has  gone  the  way 
of  its  earlier  synonyms :  the  usual  words  in 
East  Derbyshire,  for  instance,  are  swat  and 
hurl  (pronounced  oil}.  The  notion  of  striking 
was  expressed  by  the  verb  now  pronounced 
slay,  which  survives  only  in  a  narrowed  and 
developed  meaning,  and  even  in  this  meaning 
is  confined  to  literature.  Here,  again,  German 
has  kept  the  old  word  (schlagen},  while  English 
has  rejected  it  for  more  vigorous  synonyms. 
In  the  Bible  of  1611  the  common  verb  in 
this  sense  is  smite,  which  in  Old  English  meant 
to  smear  or  rub  over.  Its  later  use  may  be 
compared  with  the  Elizabethan  use  of  anoint 
for  to  cudgel,  and  perhaps  with  the  modern 
slang  wipe  for  a  blow.  But  smite  is  now 
obsolete  in  ordinary  language  ;  the  regular  word 
is  strike,  the  Old  English  sense  of  which  was, 
like  that  of  the  equivalent  German  streichen,  to 
stroke,  wipe,  rub  gently.  In  colloquial  use  strike 
itself  is  to  a  great  extent  superseded  by  hit, 
which  originally  meant  to  meet  with  or  light 
upon,  and  then  '  not  to  miss '  the  mark  aimed 
at.  Although  we  still  use  the  Old  English 
beat  with  reference  to  the  infliction  of  corporal 
chastisement,  the  more  popular  synonym  is 
thrash,  a  lively  metaphor  taken  from  the 


v.]  CHANGES   OF   MEANING 


177 


language  of  the  farm.  In  most  provincial  dia- 
lects there  is  an  ample  store  of  verbs  for 
expressing  this  meaning,  mostly  figurative  in 
their  origin. 

When   the   resemblances    that    have   caused    a 
word   to   acquire    several    new  senses   happen    to 
be    all    of   the   same   kind,   the   meaning   of   the 
word   is   often   widened   or  generalized.     That  is 
to   say,  the  word  obtains  a  sense  in  which  it  is 
descriptive   of  all  the  various  things  to  which  it 
has    been   applied,  and   of  all   other  things    that 
share  their  common    properties.     This   does    not 
always  happen.     There    is    no  general    sense    of 
horse  in   which   the  word  is  applicable  both  to   a 
racehorse  and  to  a  clothes-horse.      In  order  that 
a  widening  of   sense  should    occur,   it    is   neces- 
sary   that    the    common    features   of  the    several 
things   denoted    should    be  such  as  to    form    an 
important    part    of    the    description    of   each    of 
them.      A     good     instance     of    the     process     is 
afforded  by  the  word  pipe,  which  originally  meant 
a     simple     musical     instrument,    and    afterwards 
(already    in    Old    English)   was    applied    to    other 
things  resembling  this  in  shape.      It  thus  became 
a   general    name   for    a    hollow   cylindrical    body. 
We  are    now  apt    to    regard   this   as   its    proper 
meaning,    and     to     think     that     the     shepherd's 

M 


i;8  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

'  pipe '  was  so  called  because  of  its  tubular  form. 
Sometimes  the  widening  of  the  sense  of  a  word  is 
progressive.  Box  in  early  use  meant  a  small  re- 
ceptacle (originally  one  made  of  boxwood,  but 
this  limitation  had  already  been  dropped  in  Old 
English),  furnished  with  a  lid,  and  intended  to 
contain  drugs,  ointments,  jewels,  or  money.  The 
sense  grew  gradually  wider,  as  the  word  was 
used  to  denote  other  things  bearing  a  close 
resemblance  in  form  and  use  to  those  which 
were  previously  designated  by  it ;  but  down  to 
the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century  the  word 
continued  to  be  regarded  as  appropriate  only  to 
objects  of  comparatively  small  size.  After  1700 
this  restriction  disappeared,  so  that,  e.g.,  a  chest 
for  holding  clothes  could  be  called  a  box.  The 
notion  corresponding  to  the  word  is  now  so 
general  that  it  is  equally  applicable  to  what 
would  formerly  have  been  called  a  box,  and  to 
what  would  formerly  have  been  called  a  chest. 
It  is  to  be  remarked  that  the  word  has  many 
modern  applications,  which,  though  connected  with 
the  older  senses  by  similarity,  have  not  brought 
about  any  generalization  of  sense.  While  we 
regard  a  pill-box,  a  band-box,  and  a  box  for 
clothes  as  objects  belonging  to  one  class,  we 
have  no  notion  of  a  wider  class  which  compre- 


v.]  CHANGES  OF  MEANING 


179 


hends  these  together  with  a  box  in  a  stable,  a 
box  in  a  theatre,  a  signalman's  box,  and  a 
shooting-box. 

Generalization  of  meaning  takes  place  in  verbs 
as  well  as  in  substantives,  and  some  of  the  Eng- 
lish examples  are  very  remarkable.  The  verb 
bend  is  derived  from  the  Germanic  word  which 
in  English  has  the  two  forms  band  and  bond. 
It  meant  originally  to  'string'  a  bow,  to  strain 
it  by  pulling  the  string,  in  preparation  for  dis- 
charging the  arrow.  The  result  of  this  process 
being  to  give  curvature  to  the  wood,  to  'bend 
a  bow '  was  apprehended  as  meaning  to  curve 
or  arch  it  by  force ;  and  then  people  spoke  of 
'bending'  other  things  than  bows,  first  in  the 
sense  of  forcing  them  into  an  arched  shape,  and 
afterwards  in  the  widened  sense  of  bringing 
them  by  effort  out  of  a  straight  form.  The 
word  has  some  other  applications  which  do  not 
historically  belong  to  this  generalized  sense, 
though  some  of  them  are  now  thought  of  as 
derived  from  it.  For  instance,  when  we  speak 
of  *  bending  one's  powers  to  a  task,'  we  are  using 
what  was  originally  a  metaphor  taken  from  the 
action  of  bending  a  bow.  Again,  the  verb  carry 
is  an  adoption  of  an  Old  French  word  which, 
in  accordance  with  etymology,  meant  to  convey 


180  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

something  in  a  wheeled  vehicle.  In  English  it 
was  applied  to  signify  other  modes  of  convey- 
ance, perhaps  at  first  by  way  of  joke,  as  when 
nowadays  people  speak  of  '  carting '  some  object 
from  one  room  to  another.  In  the  end,  the  verb 
became  the  most  general  expression  for  the  act 
of  removing  a  thing  from  one  place  to  another 
by  lifting  it  from  the  ground.  In  this  sense  it 
has  to  a  great  extent  superseded  the  older  verb 
to  bear. 

While  generalization  of  meaning  is  one  of  the 
most  common  features  in  the  history  of  words, 
there  occur  quite  as  many  instances  of  the  con- 
trary process,  whereby  a  word  of  wide  meaning 
acquires  a  narrower  sense,  in  which  it  is  applicable 
only  to  some  of  the  objects  which  it  previously 
ctenoted.  The  reason  why  this  process  of  special- 
ization, as  it  is  called,  is  so  frequent  is  easy  to 
explain.  Even  when  we  use  a  term  in  a  very 
wide  sense,  we  are  seldom  thinking  of  the  whole 
class  of  things  which  it  designates.  The  word 
animal,  for  instance,  may  indeed  be  used  quite 
indeterminately,  as  when  we  are  making  a  state- 
ment about  all  animals,  or  putting  a  supposed 
case  in  which  it  does  not  matter  what  species 
of  animal  is  meant.  But,  far  more  frequently, 
we  say  '  this  animal '  when  we  know  that  we 


v.]  CHANGES  OF  MEANING  181 

might  as  well  say  'this  horse'  or  'this  cow,' 
just  as  we  often  use  the  verb  to  go  when  we 
might  as  well  speak  more  definitely  of  walking 
or  riding.  If  we  have  to  mention  some  living 
creature  of  which  we  do  not  know  the  name,  we 
can  only  call  it  an  animal,  though  we  know  that 
the  idea  in  our  minds  is  more  definite  than  that 
which  this  word  implies.  Now  when  a  word  of 
wide  meaning  happens  to  be  very-  frequently 
applied  to  some  one  out  of  the  many  classes  of 
objects  which  come  under  its  general  definition, 
the  usual  consequence  is  that  the  word,  when 
used  in  particular  circumstances,  suggests  the 
notion  only  of  the  limited  class.  Perhaps  the 
general  sense  does  not  go  out  of  use ;  but  a 
new  specific  sense  has  been  developed  alongside 
of  it. 

The  two  contrary  processes,  of  generalization 
and  specialization,  are  very  often  illustrated  in  the 
history  of  one  and  the  same  word.  We  have 
seen  how  the  word  pipe,  meaning  originally  a 
certain  instrument  of  music,  developed  the  general 
sense  of  '  a  thing  of  tubular  shape.'  When  the 
smoking  of  tobacco  was  introduced,  people  said 
that  the  smoke  was  drawn  through  a  pipe.  So  far 
there  was  no  specialization  of  meaning ;  and  if 
the  English  had  adopted  some  foreign  name  for 


1 82  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

the  smoker's  instrument  there  might  have  been  no 
specialization,  though  we  should  still  call  the 
thing  a  '  pipe '  when  we  were  thinking  particularly 
of  its  shape.  Nor  would  the  word  have  been 
specialized  if  it  had  always  been  convenient  to 
speak  of  '  a  tobacco-pipe '  or  '  a  pipe  for  smok- 
ing ' ;  but  since  in  most  cases  the  reference  was 
clear  enough  without  this  troublesome  precision, 
the  simple  word  has  acquired  a  specific  sense,  in 
which  it  is  used  quite  without  any  mental  re- 
ference to  the  wider  meaning. 

It  is  natural  that  the  development  of  specific 
meanings,  where  the  more  general  sense  survives, 
should  sometimes  lead  to  inconvenient  ambi- 
guities, and  in  such  cases  a  specialized  use  has 
often  become  obsolete,  being  superseded  by  the 
more  frequent  employment  of  some  term  that  has 
no  other  than  the  restricted  meaning.  To  go, 
which  has  properly  about  as  wide  a  sense  as  any 
verb  can  possibly  have,  had  in  early  English  also 
a  limited  sense.  Even  so  late  as  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  Bunyan  writes :  "  I  am  re- 
solved to  run  when  I  can,  to  go  when  I  cannot 
run,  and  to  creep  when  I  cannot  go "  ;  but  this 
was  already  somewhat  old-fashioned  English. 
Earlier,  such  expressions  as  '  neither  to  ride  nor 
go '  were  common.  The  German  gehen  still 


v.]  CHANGES  OF  MEANING  183 

retains  the  narrower  as  well  as  the  wider  sense, 
but  in  modern  English  the  narrower  sense  is 
expressed  by  walk. 

Some  general  terms  have  acquired  many  dif- 
ferent specific  meanings,  which  do  not  cause 
confusion  only  because  the  circumstances  in  which 
they  are  used  are  different  The  name  of  a 
material  often  becomes  the  name  of  several 
different  articles  made  of  the  material.  This 
does  not  always  happen :  there  is  no  utensil 
commonly  called  a  gold,  a  silver,  or  a  wood;  but 
a  glass  may  mean  either  a  drinking  vessel,  a 
mirror,  a  telescope,  or  a  barometer,  and  there  are 
many  other  different  applications  of  the  word ; 
an  iron  may  be  an  instrument  for  smoothing 
linen,  a  tool  for  branding,  a  harpoon,  or  a  kind 
of  golf-club  ;  a  copper  may  be  a  copper  coin,  a 
mug  for  ale,  or  a  large  caldron  (and,  by  trans- 
ference of  application,  now  often  one  made  of 
iron).  It  does  not  appear  that  in  such  cases 
there  has  always  been  an  intermediate  general 
sense  '  thing  made  of  the  material,'  for  many 
specific  applications  are  missing  which  on  that 
supposition  we  should  have  expected  to  find. 
Iron  does  not,  like  the  synonyms  in  French  and 
German,  mean  specifically  a  horseshoe,  nor  is 
glass  ordinarily  used  for  a  glass  bottle.  We  may 


184  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

therefore  regard  most  of  the  special  applications 
above  mentioned  as  having  been  produced  by  the 
omission  of  the  defining  prefix  in  compounds  : 
thus  glass  in  the  senses  above  referred  to  is  a 
shortening  of  drinking-glass,  looking-glass,  spy- 
glass, and  weather-glass. 

The  changes  of  meaning  hitherto  discussed 
consist  for  the  most  part  in  the  use  of  a  word  to 
stand  for  something  resembling  that  which  it 
previously  signified.  Even  the  processes  of 
generalization  and  specialization  may  be  said  to 
come  under  this  head.  But  besides  the  perception 
of  resemblance,  there  are  other  causes  that  have 
had  much  to  do  with  the  development  of  new 
senses  of  words.  One  of  these  lies  in  the  fact 
that  most  of  the  objects  (whether  material  or 
immaterial)  which  words  denote  are  complex ; 
that  is  to  say,  they  consist  of  several  parts. 
When  we  think  of  any  complex  thing,  we  seldom 
have  in  our  consciousness  the  idea  of  all  its  com- 
ponent parts  ;  when  we  use  its  name,  we  virtually 
mean,  not  the  whole  object,  but  only  so  much  of 
it  as  happens  to  be  important  for  our  mental 
point  of  view  at  the  moment.  And  sometimes, 
when  we  are  thinking  of  a  definite  individual 
thing,  the  possible  mental  points  of  view  are  very 


v.]  CHANGES  OF  MEANING  185 

numerous,  so  that  there  is  a  great  variety  of 
partial  conceptions  any  one  of  which  is  liable  to 
be  substituted  for  the  total  conception  of  the 
object.  For  instance,  if  a  man  says  "  that  book," 
pointing  to  a  volume  lying  on  the  table,  there  are 
at  least  half  a  dozen  different  things  that  he  may 
mean.  He  may  say  "That  book  weighs  half  a 
pound "  ;  and  then  the  '  book '  that  he  is  think- 
ing of  consists  of  a  number  of  sheets  of  paper  and 
a  leather  or  cloth  cover.  If  he  says  "  That  book 
was  unbound  when  I  bought  it,"  he  is  identifying 
the  'book'  with  the  sheets  of  paper  apart  from  the 
binding ;  but  if  he  says  "  That  book  is  the 
handsomest  volume  I  have  got,"  he  may  be  refer- 
ring to  the  binding  only.  If  he  says  "  I  was  just 
reading  that  book,"  the  essential  part  of  the 
'  book '  is  neither  the  paper  nor  the  binding,  but 
the  black  marks  on  the  paper.  Further,  he  may 
say  "  I  had  read  that  book  before,  but  in  another 
edition  "  ;  and  then  the  '  book  '  is  identified  with  a 
certain  immaterial  constituent  of  it,  which  may 
be  defined  as  consisting  of  a  particular  series  of 
words.  And,  lastly,  if  he  says  "  I  have  read  that 
book  in  several  different  languages,"  the  '  book  ' 
means  for  him  yet  another  immaterial  part  of  the 
whole,  viz.  a  certain  product  of  mental  labour, 
which  retains  its  identity  even  when  the  series 


i86  THE   MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

of  words  in  which  it  is  embodied  is  totally 
changed. 

Now  it  would  not  be  true  to  say  that  in  these 
six  examples  of  its  use  the  word  book  has  six 
different  senses,  in  the  lexicographer's  acceptation 
of  the  term.  The  word  denotes  the  same  complex 
unity  throughout,  though  the  several  statements 
macle  relate  to  different  parts  of  this.  But  the 
illustration  shows  how  the  idea  of  any  complex 
whole  is  liable  on  occasion  to  become  virtually 
coincident  with  the  idea  of  one  or  other  of  its 
parts  ;  and  in  this  characteristic  of  human  thought 
we  have  the  explanation  of  one  of  the  processes 
by  which  new  senses  of  words  are  developed. 
We  continually  find,  in  studying  the  history  of  a 
language,  that  a  word  which  at  first  denoted  some 
simple  object  has  come  to  mean  the  compound 
object  of  which  it  is  a  part,  and  that  a  word  which 
at  first  stood  for  a  compound  object  has  come  to 
stand  for  one  of  the  component  portions.  Very 
often,  a  word  has  first  acquired  an  inclusive  sense, 
in  which  it  means  the  thing  which  it  originally 
denoted  together  with  other  things  commonly 
accompanying  this  ;  and  afterwards  it  has  been 
appropriated  to  the  accompaniments  themselves. 

For  example,  the  word  board,  in  its  specialized 
application  to  a  table,  has  acquired  two  very 


v.]  CHANGES  OF  MEANING  187 

divergent  '  inclusive  senses,'  and  each  of  these  has 
given  rise  to  another  sense  from  which  the  original 
notion  has  disappeared.  On  the  one  hand,  board 
was  used  for  the  table  with  the  food  upon  it ;  and 
hence  it  has  come  to  denote  the  food  alone,  as 
when  we  speak  of '  paying  for  one's  board.'  On 
the  other  hand,  the  word  was  applied  to  a  table 
together  with  the  persons  who  habitually  sit 
around  it  to  deliberate ;  a  board  of  guardians  of 
the  poor,  or  a  board  of  directors,  is  a  number  of 
persons  jointly  entrusted  with  certain  deliberative 
functions.  So  too,  in  English  as  in  many  other 
languages,  the  word  house  has  been  taken  to  mean 
a  building  together  with  the  persons  inhabiting  or 
occupying  it,  and  hence  it  was  successively  used 
for  a  family  consisting  of  parents  and  children, 
and  for  a  wider  unity  of  which  a  family  is  a  part, 
consisting  of  persons  connected  by  common 
descent,  as  when  we  speak  of  the  houses  of 
York  and  Lancaster.  By  a  similar  transference 
of  meaning  '  the  House  of  Lords '  and  '  the  House 
of  Commons'  are  used  for  the  members  respec- 
tively of  the  upper  and  of  the  lower  branch  of  the 
English  legislature.  The  etymological  sense  of 
world  is  '  an  age  or  generation  of  men.'  Through 
the  inclusive  sense  '  man  and  his  dwelling-place,' 
the  word  has  become  capable  of  being  applied  to 


188  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

the  earth  itself,  and  hence  by  generalization  of 
meaning,  we  can  speak  of  '  uninhabited  worlds  '  in 
space,  or  of  the  '  worlds '  into  which  human  souls 
pass  after  death. 

The  development  of  new  senses  through 
inclusive  use  takes  place  no  less  frequently 
with  verbs  than  with  substantives.  In  Old 
English  the  verb  wear  (weriari}  meant  simply 
'to  be  clothed  with/  'to  have  on.'1  But  the 
action  of  '  wearing '  a  garment,  in  this  sense 
of  the  verb,  will  in  time  have  the  result  of 
making  it  unfit  for  use.  It  will  become  thread- 
bare, or  it  will  be  rubbed  into  holes.  Hence, 
in  Middle  English,  the  verb  obtained  an  inclusive 
sense,  in  which  it  denoted  the  action  together 
with  its  consequence.  Still  later,  it  was  often 
used  with  reference  to  the  consequence  only ; 
and  this  meaning  was  afterwards  generalized, 
so  as  to  be  applied  to  other  objects  than  gar- 
ments. In  the  Bible  of  1 6 1 1  we  read,  "  The 
waters  wear  the  stones  "  ;  and  we  can  now  speak 
of  'a  face,  worn  by  trouble.'  The  twofold 
meaning  of  the  word  may  sometimes  give  rise 
to  ambiguity.  '  A  dress  that  is  much  worn ' 
may  mean  either  a  style  of  dress  that  is  fashion- 
able, or  an  individual  garment  that  is  the  worse 

1  It  also  had  the  sense  '  to  clothe.' 


v.]  CHANGES  OF  MEANING  189 

for  wear.  When  the  verb  is  used  intransitively, 
it  may  even  have  quite  contradictory  senses. 
We  may  say  '  I  want  a  cloth  that  will  wear,' 
and  '  I  want  a  cloth  that  will  not  wear/  the 
two  statements  meaning  exactly  the  same  thing. 

The  original  meaning  of  the  verb  cry  is  to 
utter  a  loud  noise.  But  it  was  applied  specially 
to  noisy  weeping  ;  and  in  modern  colloquial  use 
the  notion  of  making  a  noise  may  be  dropped, 
so  that  we  can  say  that  a  person  is  '  crying ' 
who  is  shedding  tears  silently. 

The  history  of  the  senses  of  the  verb  drive 
exhibits  more  than  one  instance  of  the  process 
of  which  we  are  speaking.  The  primary  sense 
of  the  word  is  exemplified  when  we  speak  of 
driving  a  flock  of  sheep :  and  it  is  with  a  very 
similar  notion  that  a  coachman  is  said  to  drive 
the  horses.  But  the  coachman's  action  includes 
not  only  the  urging  of  the  horses  forward,  but 
also  the  regulating  and  directing  of  the  course 
of  the  vehicle  drawn  by  them.  The  verb  has 
come  to  be  used  for  the  whole  action,  of  which 
the  literal  'driving'  is  the  least  prominent  part 
When  we  say  that  a  man  drives  a  railway  engine, 
we  mean  that  he  regulates  the  course  of  the 
engine,  as  the  coachman  does  that  of  the  carriage; 
but  in  the  literal  sense  of  the  word  he  '  drives ' 


igo  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

nothing  at  all.  It  is  a  still  further  remove  from 
the  original  meaning  when  the  man  in  charge 
of  a  stationary  engine  is  said  to  drive  it.  Again, 
the  person  who  as  coachman  drives  a  carnage 
is  travelling  in  it  himself.  The  verb  as  applied 
to  him  has  therefore  an  '  inclusive  meaning ' ; 
and  in  modern  use  this  may  sometimes  drop 
what  was  its  primary  element,  so  that  drive 
comes  to  mean  '  to  travel  in  a  carriage  drawn 
by  horses,'  even  if  somebody  else  holds  the 
reins.  Here,  as  in  a  former  instance,  the  develop- 
ment of  meanings  has  resulted  in  ambiguity. 
'  He  drives  his  own  carriage '  sometimes  means 
*  he  has  a  carriage  of  his  own/  and  sometimes 
'he  acts  as  his  own  coachman.' 

in  many  cases  a  word  has  obtained  a  special 
shade  of  meaning  through  the  accidental  pro- 
minence of  some  particular  association  in  which 
it  frequently  occurs.  The  verb  to  harbour,  for 
instance,  formerly  meant  generally  '  to  receive 
as  a  guest,'  '  to  give  shelter  to/  '  to  entertain ' ; 
but,  owing  to  its  frequent  occurrence  in  the 
proclamations  which  denounced  penalties  against 
the  harbouring  of  criminals,  it  has  come  to  be 
restricted  to  denote  the  sheltering  of  persons  or 
things  that  ought  not  to  be  sheltered.  In  the 


v.]  CHANGES  OF   MEANING 


191 


figurative  sense,  we  speak  of  harbouiing  evil 
thoughts,  but  not  of  harbouring  good  thoughts. 
Not  long  ago,  an  advertisement  was  quoted  in 
the  papers,  in  which  a  community  of  Italian 
monks  appealed  to  English  charity  for  sub- 
scriptions to  their  hospital  on  the  ground  that 
"  they  harbour  all  kinds  of  diseases."  The 
expression  was  unfortunate,  but  in  English  of 
an  earlier  period  it  would  have  had  no  sinister 
meaning.  The  word  doctor,  literally  '  teacher,' 
was  given  as  a  title  to  persons  who  had  received 
from  a  University  the  attestation  of  their  com- 
petence to  teach  some  branch  of  learning  ;  but, 
as  the  doctor  of  medicine  was  the  kind  of 
'  doctor '  best  known  to  people  in  general,  the 
title  was  popularly  regarded  as  belonging  in  an 
especial  sense  to  the  physician.  Subsequently, 
in  accordance  with  the  common  tendency  to 
extend  downwards  the  range  of  application  of 
honorific  titles,  it  came  to  be  applied  to  any 
practitioner  of  the  healing  art,  whether  having 
a  University  degree  or  not. 

It  is  similarly  owing  to  the  frequency  of  one 
particular  association  that  fellow,  which  originally 
meant  a  business  partner,  and  then  generally  a 
companion  or  comrade,  has  obtained  the  bad 
sense  which  it  has  in  Pope's  well-known  line, 


192  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

"  Worth  makes  the  man,  and  want  of  it  the 
fellow."  In  the  fourteenth  century,  fellow  was  a 
condescending  form  of  address  (like  the  French 
mon  ami)  to  a  servant  or  other  person  of  inferior 
station.  We  read  in  the  poem  of  William  of 
Palerne  how  "  the  Emperor  called  to  him  the 
cowherd,  and  courteously  said,  Now  tell  me, 
fellow,  sawest  thou  ever  the  Emperor  ?  "  In  the 
sixteenth  century  it  was  still  customary  to  call 
a  servant  '  fellow '  ;  and  although  this  was  no 
longer  a  mark  of  polite  condescension,  it  did  not 
imply  any  rudeness  or  bullying,  as  we  are  apt 
to  imagine  when  we  meet  with  it  in  the  Eliza- 
bethan dramatists.  But  the  frequency  of  this 
application  rendered  it  unfitting  to  use  the 
word  vocatively  to  an  equal  in  the  sense  of 
*  comrade.'  To  say  '  fellow '  to  one  not  greatly 
inferior  was  naturally  regarded  as  a  gross 
insult,  and  hence  it  is  that  the  word  is  now 
used  to  signify  a  person  for  whom  one  has  no 
respect. 

A  very  curious  example  of  the  way  in  which 
words  originally  of  wide  meaning  have  been 
restricted  in  their  application  may  be  seen  in 
the  history  of  the  verb  to  stink  and  the  related 
substantive  stench.  In  Old  English  these  words 
could  just  as  appropriately  be  used  to  describe 


v.]  CHANGES   OF   MEANING 


193 


a  delightful  odour  as  a  disagreeable  one.  It 
could  be  said  that  a  rose  stinks  sweetly,  or  that 
a  precious  ointment  was  valued  for  its  stench. 
When  the  '  five  wits '  or  senses  are  enumerated  by 
Old  English  writers,  stench  is  the  name  for  the 
sense  of  smell.  But  it  seems  to  be  a  fact  that 
unpleasant  odours  make  a  stronger  impression, 
and  are  more  frequently  remarked  upon,  than 
those  which  are  pleasing ;  and  hence  in  Middle 
English  these  words  came  to  be  applied  only 
to  offensive  sensations.  In  Old  High  German 
the  verb  (stinkati)  had  the  same  breadth  of 
meaning  as  in  Old  English,  but  in  modern 
German  it  means  just  the  same  as  in  modern 
English.  It  is  noteworthy  that  while  we  have 
a  special  verb  to  express  an  unpleasant  odour, 
there  is  no  verb,  either  in  English  or  German, 
to  express  the  contrary  meaning.  It  is  true 
that  English  has  adopted  from  Latin  the  adjective 
fragrant  and  the  substantive  fragrance,  but  these 
are  rather  literary  than  popular  words.  The 
substantive  scent  (derived  from  the  French  sentir, 
originally  '  to  feel  or  perceive,'  but  also  used  in 
the  special  sense  'to  smell')  is  chiefly,  but  not 
exclusively,  used  in  a  favourable  sense.  The 
origin  of  the  word  smell,  which  has  superseded 
stink  and  stench  in  their  older  neutral  meaning, 

N 


194  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

is    obscure  ;    it  is  found,  both  as  noun  and  verb, 
as  early  as  the  twelfth  century. 

In  some  instances  it  has  happened  that  one 
of  the  older  words  of  the  language  has  been 
almost  entirely  superseded  by  a  synonym  either 
of  later  growth  or  introduced  from  some  foreign 
tongue,  but  has  survived  in  one  or  two  restricted 
applications.  Thus  the  Latin  spirit  has  taken 
the  place  of  the  native  ghost  in  general  use ; 
but  there  are  two  noteworthy  and  very  diverse 
applications  in  which  the  older  word  has 
remained  current.  One  of  these  is  the  theo- 
logical use.  Formularies  of  religious  instruc- 
tion and  ritual  are  never  easily  modified 
in  diction,  because  the  sentiment  of  reverence 
attaches  itself  to  the  traditional  wording.  The 
designation  '  Holy  Ghost '  occurred  in  the 
baptismal  formula  and  in  the  Creed,  which 
from  an  early  date  were  familiar  in  the  ver- 
nacular to  every  Christian.  Although  it  is  now 
permissible  to  speak  of  the  '  Holy  Spirit,'  the 
older  expression  still  retains  the  special  solem- 
nity that  belongs  to  the  traditional  terms  of 
ritual ;  and  at  one  time  the  substitution  of 
the  Latin  synonym  would  probably  have 
seemed  almost  irreverent.  Yet  it  is  only  with 
the  accompanying  adjective  that  the  word  Ghost 


V.]  CHANGES   OF   MEANING  195 

can  be  applied  to  the  Divine  Spirit.  To  say 
'  the  Ghost  of  God,'  or  '  God's  Ghost,'  as  was 
freely  done  in  early  English,  would  be  utterly 
shocking,  because  every  one  now  feels  that  the 
proper  sense  of  ghost  is  '  the  apparition  of  a  dead 
person.'  This  use  of  the  word  was,  for  obvious 
reasons,  the  one  that  was  most  deeply  rooted 
in  the  popular  consciousness.  The  foreign 
synonym  might  displace  the  vernacular  word  so 
far  as  it  represented  ideas  that  were  familiar 
only  to  cultivated  people ;  in  the  sense  in 
which  it  was  used  every  day  by  the  multitude 
it  was  not  so  easy  to  supersede  it. 

The  history  of  the  word  lord  is,  on  the 
whole,  closely  parallel  to  that  of  ghost.  It  is  a 
contracted  pronunciation  of  the  Old  English 
hldfweard^-  or  hldford,  which  literally  translated 
is  '  bread-keeper.'  The  word  originally  meant 
the  head  of  a  household  in  relation  to  the 
servants  and  dependents,  who  were  called  his 
'  bread-eaters '  ; 2  and  in  Old  English  it  had 
come  to  be  the  most  general  term  for  one 
who  bears  rule  over  others.  In  Middle  English 

1  This  full  form  occurs  only  in  one  passage  ;  in  the  usual  form 
hlaford  the  w  was  elided   in   haste   of  pronunciation,  as  in  the 
modern  pennort/i  for  pennyworth. 

2  In  Old  English  klaf-setan :  the  word  hlaf,  bread,  is  the  same 
as  the  modern  loaf. 


196  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

the  French  word  master  was  introduced,  and 
by  degrees  it  took  the  place  of  lord  in  this 
wide  sense.  It  is  true  that  the  Bible  trans- 
lators of  1 6 1  i  still  use  lord,  and  not  master,  as 
the  regular  correlative  to  servant,  and  in  poetry 
or  elevated  language  the  word  can  still  have 
its  original  meaning ;  but  so  far  as  the  diction 
of  ^common  life  is  concerned,  that  sense  has 
been  obsolete  for  many  centuries.  In  fact  lord, 
like  ghost,  is  a  native  word  that  has  been 
ousted  from  its  place  by  a  foreign  synonym  ; 
but,  like  that  word,  it  continues  to  be  used  in 
certain  special  applications,  one  of  them  being 
religious.  In  the  Old  English  service-books, 
hldford  was  adopted  as  the  translation  of  the 
Latin  Dominus,  as  applied  to  God  and  Christ,1 
and  this  use  of  the  word  had  so  prominent  a 
place  in  the  ordinary  language  of  devotion 
that  it  could  never  be  superseded.  But  besides 
its  religious  sense,  lord  had  another  specific 
application.  A  man  of  high  rank  was  called 
'  my  lord,'  not  only  by  his  own  '  bread-eaters,'  but 
as  a  customary  mark  of  respect  by  his  inferiors 
in  station  generally.  As  the  word  master  more 

1  There  was  another  word,  dryhten,  which  was  also  used 
as  a  rendering  of  Dominus  in  this  use.  It  survived  into  the 
fifteenth  century  as  Drighlin,  but  afterwards  fell  into  disuse. 


v.]  CHANGES  OF  MEANING  197 

and  more  took  the  place  of  lord  in  its  original 
use,  lord  became  more  and  more  definitely 
restricted  to  its  use  as  a  designation  of  ele- 
vated station,  and  was  employed  as  a  prefix 
to  the  names  or  territorial  appellations  of  barons 
and  nobles  of  higher  grades.  Hence,  in  modern 
times,  when  we  hear  of  '  a  lord,'  unless  there 
is  something  in  the  context  to  indicate  some 
other  meaning,  we  always  understand  the  reference 
to  be  to  one  of  those  persons  whose  ordinary 
appellation  has  the  prefix  '  Lord '  as  indicating 
his  rank.  In  Scotland,  where  the  Old  English 
hlaford  came  (in  accordance  with  the  phonetic 
laws  of  the  northern  dialect)  to  be  pronounced 
not  lord  but  laird,  the  word  has  retained  a 
meaning  nearer  to  its  original  sense,  being 
applied  to  any  owner  of  landed  property.  But 
as  early  as  the  fourteenth  century,  the  English 
form  lord  was  in  Scotland  adopted  in  the 
special  meanings  that  had  grown  up  in  the 
southern  kingdom — viz.,  as  a  title  of  the  Deity, 
and  as  the  designation  for  a  nobleman. 

Another  Old  English  word  that  has  undergone 
alteration  of  meaning  through  the  introduction  of 
a  foreign  synonym  is  fcond,  in  modern  English 
fiend.  This  is  a  substantive  formed  from  the 
present  participle  of  the  verb  feon,  to  hate.  In 


198  THE   MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

Old  English,  and  down  to  the  middle  of  the 
fourteenth  century,  it  was  used,  as  the  equivalent 
Feind  still  is  in  German,  as  the  contrary  of  friend. 
In  early  Middle  English  the  word  enemy  was 
adopted  from  French,  and  the  native  synonym 
gradually  ceased  to  be  used,  except  in  the  parti- 
cular application  which  was  common  in  sermons 
and  religious  discourse — viz.,  with  reference  to  the 
unseen  enemies  of  the  souls  of  men.  In  the  end, 
the  original  meaning  of  the  word  was  quite 
forgotten,  and  it  became  simply  equivalent  to 
devil.  A  circumstance  which  seems  somewhat 
curious  is  that,  although  the  word  owes  its  pre- 
servation to  its  having  belonged  at  one  time  to 
the  vocabulary  of  religious  literature  and  speech, 
it  has  ceased  to  belong  to  this  special  vocabulary 
at  "all.  It  is  not  found  in  the  English  Bible 
or  in  the  Prayer-book,  and  is  not  at  all  frequent 
in  sermons  or  other  religious  books.  Its  most 
prominent  modern  use  is  as  a  term  of  opprobrium 
for  human  beings  whose  exceeding  wickedness 
suggests  comparison  with  that  of  devils. 

In  the  history  of  the  synonymous  adjectives 
dizzy  and  giddy,  we  have  another  instance  in 
which  a  foreign  word  has  usurped  the  ordinary 
sense  of  its  native  equivalents,  but  has  allowed 
them  to  survive  in  one  of  their  less  frequent 


v.]  CHANGES  OF  MEANING  199 

special  applications.  In  Old  English  dysig  (now 
dizzy}  was  the  usual  word  for  '  foolish '  ;  it  was 
also  used  substantively,  so  that  Id  dysega  in  the 
Gospels  is  the  equivalent  of  "thou  fool"  in  the 
modern  version.  Gydig  (giddy)  had  the  same 
sense.  The  etymology  of  these  words,  by  the 
way,  is  extremely  curious  :  the  prehistoric  meaning 
of  both  seems  to  have  been  '  possessed  by  a  god.'1 
Gydig  is  a  derivative  of  god ;  and  dysig  is  from 
the  Indo-Germanic  root  dhwes-  represented  in  the 
Greek  theos  (from  dhwesos]  a  god.  However,  in 
Old  English  the  original  meaning  of  these 
adjectives  had  already  become  obsolete,  and  they 
no  longer  denoted  a  'divine  madness,'  but  only 
commonplace  want  of  sense.  But  early  in  the 
Middle  English  period  the  French  word  fol  (a 
slang  use  of  the  Latin  follis,  a  windbag)  was 
introduced,  and  this  word,  in  the  modern  form  foolt 
still  continues  in  use.  It  was  originally  used  as  an 
adjective  as  well  as  a  substantive,  and  before  the 
fourteenth  century  it  had  quite  superseded  both  the 
native  synonyms  in  their  principal  sense.  But 
both  dysig  and  gydig  had  been  occasionally  used 
to  describe  the  physical  condition  in  which  '  one's 
head  swims '  ;  and  when  the  more  prominent 

1  As  Greek  scholars  will  perceive,  this  is  the  etymological  sense  of 
enthusiastic. 


200  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

senses  of  the  words  had  been  driven  out  by  their 
French  synonym,  this  transferred  application 
remained  unaffected.  In  modern  use,  dizzy  and 
giddy  are  identical  in  their  literal  meaning  ;  but 
we  can  now  speak  figuratively  of  '  giddy  conduct,' 
so  that  the  word  has,  in  a  roundabout  way,  under- 
gone a  sort  of  reversion  to  its  Old  English  sense. 

Again,  the  native  English  stool,  like  the  equiva- 
lent German  Stuhl,  originally  meant  any  kind  of 
seat  for  one  person,  and  might  even  be  applied  to 
a  king's  throne.  It  acquired  its  present  restricted 
meaning  because  the  French  word  chair  had  been 
adopted  to  denote  the  more  luxurious  articles  of 
furniture  which  were  in  use  among  the  Norman 
conquerors. 

Once  more,  deer  had  in  Old  English  the  wide 
sense  of  the  German  Thier  \  but  in  Middle 
English  this  meaning  was  expressed  by  the 
French  word  beast,  and  afterwards  the  Latin 
animal  passed  from  scientific  into  popular  use. 
The  native  word  continued  to  have  its  original 
sense  down  to  the  thirteenth  century ;  about 
1 200  Ormin  says  "  Lamb  is  soffte  and  stille 
deor,"  and  still  later  we  find  the  word  applied  to 
the  lion.  But  even  already  in  the  thirteenth 
century  it  was  becoming  the  specific  name  of  the 
animal  that  was  chiefly  pursued  in  the  chase.  The 


v.]  CHANGES   OF  MEANING  201 

older  sense  survived  only  in  the  expression  '  small 
deer '  for  rats  and  mice,  which  in  Shakspere's  use 
is  an  echo  from  the  old  poem  of  Sir  Bevis. 
If  Caxton  in  1481  once  uses  deer  for  'beast,' 
that  is  only  because  he  had  lived  so  long  at 
Bruges  that  he  was  more  familiar  with  Flemish 
than  with  his  native  tongue. 


•&1 


A  very  large  number  of  English  words  have 
undergone  a  peculiar  kind  of  change  of  meaning 
which  consists  in  the  addition  of  what  has  been 
called  an  '  emotional  connotation  '  to  their  primary 
sense.  That  is  to  say,  a  word  that  originally 
served  as  a  mere  statement  of  fact  comes  to  be 
used  to  express  the  speaker's  feeling  with  regard 
to  the  fact.  Noteworthy  instances  of  this  process 
are  the  adjectives  enormous^  extraordinary ',  and 
extravagant.  In  their  etymological  sense,  these 
words  merely  express  the  fact  that  something 
passes  the  ordinary  or  prescribed  limits ;  and 
in  the  English  of  former  times  they  often  occur 
in  this  matter-of-fact  use.  Thus  '  an  enormous 
appetite '  formerly  meant  only  what  we  should 
now  call  an  abnormal  appetite  ;  '  an  extraordinary 
occurrence'  was  one  not  in  the  ordinary  course 
of  things  ;  '  extravagant  behaviour '  was  behaviour 
which  did  not  conform  to  the  accepted  rules  of 


202  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

propriety.  But  if  we  now  employ  these  words, 
we  mean  to  indicate  not  only  that  what  is 
referred  to  is  unusual  or  abnormal,  but  that  it 
is  so  in  such  a  degree  as  to  excite  our  wonder, 
indignation,  or  contempt.  In  some  cases,  such 
as  those  just  mentioned,  the  acquisition  of  an 
emotional  sense  has  been  helped  by  something 
in  the  sound  of  the  word  ;  the  long  Latin 
derivatives,  especially  when  they  contain  a  syllable 
that  admits  readily  of  being  either  drawled  out, 
or  pronounced  with  exceptional  force,  seem  to 
be  peculiarly  liable  to  develop  emotional  senses. 
But  the  same  thing  has  happened  with  many 
short  words  of  native  English  origin.  Great  and 
large,  for  instance,  mean  to  the  understanding 
very  much  the  same  thing;  but  the  former  is 
an  "emotional  word,  and  the  latter  is  not.  If  I 
say  '  I  found  a  large  table  in  my  room,'  I  am 
simply  stating  a  fact ;  but  if  I  say  '  I  found  a 
great  table  in  my  room,'  I  am  expressing  my 
surprise  or  annoyance.  The  emotional  sense  of 
the  word  has  come  into  the  language  since  the 
time  when  our  villages  received  their  names. 
To  our  modern  apprehension  it  seems  comical 
that  a  small  village  should  be  called  '  Great 
Tew,'  because  it  is  larger  than  the  neighbouring 
'Little  Tew.'  If  we  had  the  villages  to  name 


V.]  CHANGES   OF   MEANING  20 j 

for  the  first  time  nowadays,  we  should  probably 
say  '  Greater '  and  '  Lesser '  ;  the  comparative  of 
great  does  not  share  the  emotional  quality  of 
the  positive.  In  some  of  their  applications,  little 
and  small  are  so  absolutely  synonymous  that 
we  can  use  them  indiscriminately ;  but  if  any 
emotion  is  associated  with  the  designation  we 
must  choose  little.  '  A  small  boy,'  though  a 
modernism,  is  now  as  good  English  as  '  a  little 
boy ' ;  yef  a  foreigner  who  should  exclaim  com- 
passionately '  Poor  small  boy ! '  would  be  very 
likely  to  excite  laughter.  We  talk  of  '  a  nice 
little  house,'  '  a  charming  little  picture '  ;  the 
substitution  of  small  for  little  in  these  expressions 
would  be  grotesque. 

Another  word  that  has  undergone  this  kind 
of  change  of  meaning  is  grievous,  which  nowadays 
implies  sympathy  on  the  part  of  the  person 
speaking,  but  which  had  certainly  no  such  impli- 
cation in  the  days  when  offenders  were  sentenced 
to  be  '  grievously  whipped.' 

When  a  word  has  acquired  an  emotional 
colouring  foreign  to  its  original  use,  it  is  necessary 
to  provide  a  synonym  that  can  be  employed  in 
a  plain  matter-of-fact  way ;  and  if  no  such 
synonym  happens  already  to  exist  in  the  lan- 
guage, it  is  often  obtained  by  altering  the  sense 


204  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

of  some  current  word.  The  history  of  the  words 
large  and  small  is  a  good  example  of  this.  In 
Old  French  large  originally  meant  liberal  in 
giving,  or  prodigal  in  expenditure.  This  sense 
came  into  English :  '  a  large  man '  meant  a 
generous  man '  ;  fool-large  is  an  old  word  for 
'  foolishly  generous  '  or  '  extravagant.'  The  word 
developed  in  Old  French  the  additional  sense 
of  '  ample  in  dimensions,'  and  afterwards  came 
to  mean  '  broad '  as  opposed  to  long,  a  sense 
which  remains  in  modern  French.  In  the  English 
of  the  fourteenth  century  we  find  large  used  in 
these  ways.  When  great  had  acquired  its  emo- 
tional sense,  and  an  unemotional  synonym  was 
needed,  the  want  was  supplied  by  changing  the 
meaning  of  large.  The  usual  opposite  of  large, 
in  the  sense  of  broad,  was  small,  which  originally 
meant  narrow  or  slender,  as  the  German  scJimal 
still  does.  When  large  came  to  be  synonymous 
with  gre-at,  the  customary  opposition  of  '  large 
and  small '  still  remained,  so  that  small  now 
means  the  same  as  little. 

Of  the  words  used  to  designate  unpleasant 
qualities,  or  to  express  the  feelings  excited  by 
them,  many  have  come  to  have  a  much  stronger 
emotional  meaning  than  that  which  they  originally 
had.  In  early  English  foul  and  its  derivative  filth 


v.]  CHANGES  OF  MEANING  205 

could  be  used  (as  dirt  and  dirty  may  now)  with- 
out indicating  any  strong  feeling  of  repulsion.  In 
fact  dirt  was  at  one  time  a  more  emphatic  word 
than  filth.  The  verb  to  loathe  was  originally 
not  much  stronger  than  the  modern  dislike ;  the 
cognate  adjective  loath  or  loth  still  expresses  nothing 
more  than  mere  reluctance.  But  one  of  the  most 
prominent  applications  of  the  verb  was  to  express 
the  distaste  for  food  felt  by  a  sick  person  ;  and 
as  this  is  often  attended  with  an  actual  sense  of 
nausea,  the  verb  came  to  denote  such  an  intense 
repugnance  as  is  felt  for  something  physically 
revolting — something  that  '  turns  one's  stomach.' 
The  derived  adjective  loathsome  has  shared  in  this 
development  of  meaning ;  in  early  use  it  was 
much  less  forcible  than  it  is  in  modern  English. 
While  distaste,  disrelish,  dislike,  have  not  become 
more  emphatic  than  they  were  when  first  used,  the 
originally  synonymous  disgust  is  now  far  stronger 
in  meaning.  It  first  appears  in  the  French 
dictionary  of  Cotgrave  ( 1 6 1 1 ),  who  renders  des- 
aimer  by  "  to  fall  into  dislike  or  disgust  of." 
We  have  already  noted  that  stink  and  stench 
passed  in  Middle  English  from  their  original 
neutral  sense  to  one  expressive  of  unpleasant 
sensation  ;  the  intensity  of  meaning  which 
they  have  acquired  in  modern  use  exemplifies 


206  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

the    general    tendency    of    which     we    are     now 
speaking. 

It  is  worth  while  to  remark  that  in  some 
instances  words  have  undergone  changes  of  mean- 
ing because  in  their  literary  use  they  have  been 
popularly  misunderstood.  In  the  seventeenth 
century  ingenuity  had  still  its  proper  meaning  of 
'  ingenuousness  '  or  candour.  Locke,  for  instance, 
could  speak  of  an  opponent's  mode  of  argument 
as  "  more  creditable  to  his  acuteness  than  to  his 
ingenuity,"  which  to  modern  ears  sounds  like  a 
distinction  without  a  difference.  But  long  before 
Locke's  time  the  adjectives  ingenious  and  ingenuous 
had  become  confused  in  popular  use;  even  some 
very  learned  writers  (or  at  least  their  printers  for 
them)  occasionally  fell  into  the  mistake  of  substitut- 
ing the  one  for  the  other.  Hence  the  noun  in- 
genuity was  often  ignorantly  or  carelessly  misused 
for  '  ingeniousness '  or  '  ingeniosity,'  and  as  these 
latter  are  both  awkward  words,  while  a  noun 
answering  to  ingenious  was  more  frequently  wanted 
than  one  answering  to  ingenuous,  the  wrong  sense 
ended  by  expelling  the  right  one  from  the  lan- 
guage. This  is  one  of  the  many  examples  which 
show  how  powerless  the  regard  for  correctness 
becomes  when  it  conflicts  with  the  claims  of  con- 


v.]  CHANGES  OF  MEANING 


207 


venience  of  expression.  Another  very  similar 
instance  is  that  of  the  word  preposterous,  which 
literally  means  only  '  placed  in  reversed  order/ 
'put  cart  before  the  horse.'  If  a  letter  written 
to-day  is  delivered  before  one  written  yesterday, 
their  arrival  is,  in  the  original  sense  of  the 
adjective,  '  preposterous.'  But  the  word  must 
often  have  been  used  in  contexts  in  which  its 
exact  meaning  was  not  apparent,  and  so  unlearned 
people  imagined  that  it  meant  something  like 
'  outrageously  absurd.'  There  is  something  in  the 
sound  of  the  word  that  fits  it  to  receive  an 
'  emotional  connotation,'  and  it  caught  the  popular 
fancy  as  an  appropriate  expression  for  con- 
temptuous astonishment.  The  mistaken  sense  is 
now  so  firmly  established  that  it  would  be  mere 
pedantry  to  ignore  it.  Emergency  is  another  word 
that  is  often  used  in  a  sense  wrongly  inferred 
from  its  contextual  applications.  Etymologically 
it  means  '  something  that  comes  to  the  surface.' 
A  case  of  emergency  is  a  condition  of  things  that 
comes  up  unexpectedly,  so  that  it  cannot  be 
provided  for  by  ordinary  means.  But  when 
people  speak  of  '  a  case  of  great  emergency/  it 
is  evident  that  they  apprehend  the  word  to  mean 
much  the  same  thing  as  urgency  ;  and  probably 
the  resemblance  to  the  latter  word  has  had  some 


208  THE   MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

share  in  producing  the  distortion  of  meaning.  In 
bad  modern  *  newspaper  English '  the  verb  trans- 
pire is  used  for  '  to  happen  or  take  place,'  and 
this  sense  has  even  found  its  way  into  recent 
dictionaries.  Literally,  to  transpire  is  '  to  breathe 
through ' ;  and  a  circumstance  may  correctly  and 
expressively  be  said  '  to  have  transpired,'  in  the 
sense  of  having  become  known  in  spite  of  efforts 
made  to  keep  it  secret.  It  is  through  ignorant 
misapprehension  of  sentences  in  which  the  word 
was  thus  correctly  used  that  it  has  come  to  bear 
a  perverted  meaning.  As  this  blunder,  unlike 
some  others  of  the  kind,  does  not  supply  any  need 
of  the  language,  it  may  be  hoped  that  the  mis- 
application of. the  word  will  not  be  permanent. 

The  current  popular  use  of  premises  in  the 
sense  of  '  a  house  with  the  outbuildings  and 
the  land  belonging  to  it '  is  a  striking  example 
of  the  development  of  a  new  meaning  through 
misunderstanding.  In  legal  documents  the  word 
is  used  in  its  proper  sense — '  things  premised  or 
stated  beforehand.'  Just  as  the  premises  of  an 
argument  are  the  propositions  laid  down  at 
starting,  so  in  a  lease  or  a  deed  the  premises 
are  the  things  specified  at  the  beginning  as  the 
subject  to  which  the  following  stipulations  have 
reference.  In  the  body  of  such  a  document,  it 


v.]  CHANGES   OF   MEANING  209 

is  usual  to  employ  the  expression  '  the  pre- 
mises'  in  order  to  avoid  the  inconvenience  of 
repeatedly  enumerating  the  various  objects  of 
which  the  occupation  or  ownership  is  trans- 
ferred. As  thus  used,  this  expression  is  no 
more  definite  in  meaning  than  '  the  aforesaid ' 
or  '  the  beforementioned ' ;  but  the  thing  to 
which  it  refers  happens  to  be  very  frequently 
a  house  with  its  appurtenances,  and  hence  it 
has  been  popularly  apprehended  as  a  name  for 
this.  On  tavern  signs  we  read  that  mine  host 
is  "  licensed  to  sell  ale  and  beer  to  be  drunk 
on  the  premises " ;  in  police  reports  a  vagrant 
is  said  to  be  charged  with  "  being  on  certain 
premises  for  an  unlawful  purpose."  In  the 
announcement  "  This  house  and  premises  to  be 
sold,"  the  word  has  undergone  a  further 
development  of  meaning,  which  the  dictionaries 
have  not  yet  recognised. 

Sometimes,  though  not  very  often,  a  word 
has  been  so  commonly  employed  in  ironical 
language  that  its  original  meaning  has  been 
actually  reversed.  Although  every  Latin  scholar 
knows  that  egregious  is  properly  an  epithet  of 
praise,  nobody  would  now  feel  complimented  by 
being  referred  to  as  'that  egregious  person.' 

o 


210  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

Similarly,  the  adjective  sapient,  literally  meaning 
'wise,'  can  now  hardly  be  used  otherwise  than 
in  mockery.  Here,  however,  the  recollection  of 
the  proper  sense  of  the  word  remains  to  give 
point  to  its  contemptuous  use.  An  instance  in 
which  a  sense  originally  ironical  has  caused  the 
favourable  sense  to  be  forgotten  is  afforded  by 
silly  (Old  English  s&lig\  which  once  meant 
'  blessed,'  or  '  happy,'  like  the  equivalent  German 
selig.  In  Middle  English  it  was  often  used 
satirically  in  a  tone  of  mock  envy  or  admira- 
tion, and  hence  acquired  the  disparaging  sense 
which  it  now  has. 

It  has  been  several  times  pointed  out  in  this 
chapter  that  the  senses  derived  from  a  single 
primary  notion  may  be  so  diverse  that  it  is 
only  by  a  reference  to  the  history  of  their 
development  that  any  connexion  between  them 
can  be  discovered.  This  fact  suggests  the 
question  what  constitutes  the  identity  of  a  word. 
Regarded  purely  from  the  point  of  view  of 
modern  English,  fast  meaning  '  immovable  '  and 
fast  meaning  '  rapid  in  motion '  are  quite  as 
much  distinct  words  as  light  in  '  a  light 
weight'  and  light  in  'a  light  colour';  indeed 
there  is  rather  more  similarity  of  sense  in  the 


v.]  CHANGES  OF  MEANING  211 

latter  pair  than  in  the  former.  If,  however,  we 
look  at  the  matter  from  the  historical  point  of 
view,  we  must  say  that  there  is  only  one 
adjective  fast,  which  has  acquired  two  meanings, 
but  that  the  spelling  light  represents  two 
distinct  adjectives,  which  once  differed  in  form 
as  well  as  in  meaning,  but  have  come  to  be 
pronounced  alike  through  phonetic  change.  It 
is,  in  the  abstract,  quite  as  legitimate  to  take 
one  point  of  view  as  the  other  :  to  say  that  the 
adjective  fast  is  always  the  same  word,  or  to  say 
that  there  are  two  adjectives  written  and  pro- 
nounced alike.  But  in  practice  it  is  more  con- 
venient to  decide  the  question  of  identity  by  the 
test  of  origin  than  by  that  of  signification,  because 
the  most  widely  divergent  senses  of  a  word  that  is 
historically  one  are  usually  connected  by  a  chain 
of  intermediate  meanings. 

This  question,  however,  is  of  little  importance 
except  to  lexicographers.  A  matter  of  more 
general  concern  is  that  development  of  meaning, 
while  it  has  benefited  the  English  language  in 
so  many  obvious  ways,  has  unfortunately  added 
very  largely  to  the  number  of  instances  in  which 
the  same  group  of  sounds  stands  for  radically 
different  notions.  From  any  point  of  view  but 
that  of  the  lover  of  puns,  these  '  homophones ' 


212  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

are  an  unmixed  nuisance.  Our  modern  un- 
phonetic  spelling,  bad  as  it  is  in  most  respects, 
has  the  merit  of  saving  written  English  from  a 
good  many  of  the  ambiguities  of  the  spoken 
tongue.  Most  of  the  distinctions  that  exist  in 
spelling  and  not  in  pronunciation  are  between 
words  that  are  historically  different,  and  when 
this  is  so  the  various  spellings  usually  represent 
obsolete  varieties  of  pronunciation.  But  in  a  few 
cases,  the  written  language  has  been  improved 
by  the  establishment  of  an  arbitrary  difference  in 
spelling  between  what  were  originally  senses  of 
the  same  word.  We  have  seen  already  that  read 
and  rede  represent  divergent  uses  of  one  and  the 
same  Old  English  verb ;  an  old-fashioned  spelling 
has  been  retained  to  denote  the  old-fashioned 
sense,  while  the  ordinary  sense  is  expressed  by 
a  spelling  in  accordance  with  modern  analogies. 
The  verb  travail  or  travel  originally  meant 
'  to  labour,'  and  one  of  its  specialized  applications 
was  in  the  sense  of  making  a  toilsome  journey. 
This  special  use  became  generalized  afresh  in 
a  new  direction,  so  that  the  word  now  means 
simply  to  journey,  however  easily  or  pleasantly. 
But  the  Bible  and  other  old  books  have  preserved 
for  us  the  memory  of  the  original  sense,  so  that 
it  still  occurs  as  an  archaism  ;  and  as  in  the 


v.]  CHANGES   OF   MEANING  213 

instance  of  rede,  we  render  the  old-fashioned 
meaning  by  an  old-fashioned  spelling.  Burrow 
and  borough  are  probably  in  origin  the  same 
word  ;  their  senses,  different  as  they  are,  have 
been  developed  from  the  Old  English  sense 
'  stronghold/  In  the  sense  of  '  town,'  which 
occurred  very  frequently  in  writing,  an  early 
spelling  with  gh  became  permanently  fixed  ;  in 
the  sense  '  hole  made  by  an  animal,'  the  word 
was  seldom  written,  so  that  its  spelling  was 
uninfluenced  by  tradition,  and  represents  a  later 
pronunciation.1 

Most  people  will  be  surprised  to  be  told  that 
there  is  no  such  word  as  flour  in  Dr.  Johnson's 
Dictionary  of  1/55,  and  that  he  gives  'the 
edible  part  of  corn,  meal '  as  one  of  the  senses 
of  flower.  Historically  Dr.  Johnson  was  quite 
right :  the  term  '  flower  of  wheat,'  which  occurs 
about  1 200,  was  only  an  instance  of  the  still 
common  figurative  use  of  flower  to  denote  '  the 
finest  part '  of  anything.  The  original  spelling 
of  the  word  was  flour,  which  continued  to  be 
occasionally  used  in  all  senses  down  to  about 
1700,  though  flower,  introduced  in  the  fifteenth 
century,  was  latterly  the  prevailing  form.  Early 
in  the  eighteenth  century  some  writers  began 

1  Com  pare  thorough  and  furrow. 


214  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH          [CHAP,  v.] 

to  avail  themselves  of  the  existence  of  the  two 
spellings  as  a  means  of  distinguishing  the  different 
meanings.  The  generally  current  form  was 
naturally  retained  for  the  sense  which  was  most 
common  in  literature,  and  with  which  it  was 
therefore  chiefly  associated ;  the  rarer  spelling 
was  left  for  the  other  use.  Johnson  was  some- 
what behind  the  times  in  not  recognising  a  useful 
distinction  which  had  been  for  some  years 
established ;  but  lexicography  usually  lags  a 
little  after  usage.  Flower  and  flour  are  now 
unquestionably  two  words,  and  in  careful  speech 
most  people  make  a  difference  in  pronunciation 
which  is  based  on  the  artificial  difference  of 
spelling. 


CHAPTER    VI. 

SOME   MAKERS   OF   ENGLISH. 

IT  is  a  truth  often  overlooked,  but  not  unim- 
portant, that  every  addition  to  the  resources  of 
a  language  must  in  the  first  instance  have  been 
due  to  an  act  (though  not  necessarily  a  volun- 
tary or  conscious  act)  of  some  one  person.  A 
complete  history  of  the  Making  of  English 
would  therefore  include  the  names  of  the 
Makers,  and  would  tell  us  what  particular 
circumstances  suggested  the  introduction  of  each 
new  word  or  grammatical  form,  and  of  each 
new  sense  or  construction  of  a  word. 

Of  course  no  such  complete  history  could 
possibly  be  written.  We  shall  never  know  any- 
thing about  the  myriads  of  obscure  persons 
who  have  contributed  to  the  development  of 
the  English  tongue.  And  even  if  it  were 
possible  to  discover  the  author  of  every  new 


216  THE   MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

feature  that  has  been  introduced  into  the 
language  since  the  earliest  times,  and  the  exact 
conditions  under  which  it  arose,  the  information 
would  in  all  probability  only  very  rarely  have 
even  the  slightest  interest  or  value. 

But  there  are  some  Makers  of  English  of 
whose  personality  we  do  know  something : 
namely,  the  authors  of  literary  works  that  are 
still  in  existence.  The  investigation  of  the 
extent  of  their  influence  on  the  language  has 

o        o 

a  double  interest.  It  not  only  gratifies  our 
natural  curiosity  about  the  origin  of  the  mechan- 
ism of  English  speech,  but  it  also  contributes 
in  some  small  degree  to  our  knowledge  of  the 
mental  character  of  the  writers,  and  thus 
enables  us  to  attain  a  more  complete  under- 
standing of  their  works. 

Now  there  are  two  ways  in  which  an  author 
may  contribute  to  the  enrichment  of  the 
language  in  which  he  writes.  He  may  do  so 
directly  by  the  introduction  of  new  words  or 
new  applications  of  words,  or  indirectly  by  the 
effect  of  his  popularity  in  giving  to  existing 
forms  of  expression  a  wider  currency  and  a 
new  value.  If  a  popular  writer  happens  to 
employ  some  comparatively  rare  word  in  a 
striking  connexion,  it  will  very  likely  come  into 


vi.]  SOME   MAKERS   OF   ENGLISH  217 

the  common  vocabulary  of  the  multitude,  and 
then  undergo  a  development  in  sense  which 
would  have  been  impossible  if  the  word  had 
continued  to  be  confined  to  purely  literary  use. 
Moreover,  when  a  passage  of  a  poet  or  prose- 
writer  becomes  widely  familiar  as  a  quotation, 
the  words  of  which  it  consists  are  apt  to  be 
used  by  later  generations  with  a  recollection  of 
their  particular  context,  and  so  to  become 
either  specialized  or  enriched  in  meaning. 

In  this  chapter  we  shall  give  some  samples 
of  what  certain  literary  Makers  of  English 
have  done  for  the  language.  It  is  compara- 
tively seldom  that  a  word  can  be  proved  to 
have  been  used  for  the  first  time  by  a  par- 
ticular author  ;  but  it  can  often  be  shown  that 
a  writer  has  brought  a  word  into  general  use, 
or  that  a  current  sense  of  a  word  is  derived 
from  a  literary  allusion.  Of  course  it  is  not 
always  the  greatest  writers  whose  works  are  in 
this  indirect  way  most  powerful  in  their  effect 
on  the  language ;  literary  excellence  counts  for 
less  in  this  matter  than  popularity,  and  the 
ability  to  write  passages  that  lend  themselves 
to  quotation. 

It  is  important  to  point  out  that  a  great 
part  of  the  work  done  by  individual  writers  in 


218  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

the  improvement  of  the  language  is  of  too 
subtle  a  nature  to  admit  of  being  analysed  or 
accurately  estimated.  A  literary  language  has 
to  meet  requirements  which  do  not  arise  in 
ordinary  speech.  The  structure  of  sentences 
which  suffices  for  the  needs  of  oral  intercourse 
is  inadequate  for  written  composition,  where 
the  thought  to  be  expressed  is  continuous  and 
complex,  and  where  the  aids  to  intelligibility 
furnished  by  intonation  and  gesture  are  wanting. 
As  the  art  of  literary  composition  advances,  and 
the  tasks  to  which  it  addresses  itself  become 
more  ambitious,  there  is  a  constantly  increasing 
need  of  devices  for  exhibiting  more  clearly  the 
connexion  of  thought.  The  particles  used  for 
linking  one  sentence  to  another  become  more 
precise  in  their  force,  and  new  turns  of  ex- 
pression, new  syntactical  constructions,  alien  to 
the  language  of  conversation,  are  continually 
being  introduced.  Now  every  one  of  these 
improvements  in  a  language  is  an  invention  of 
some  one  person  ;  but  it  is  obviously  impos- 
sible, in  most  cases,  to  trace  them  to  their 
authors.  And  hence  it  follows  that,  although 
we  may  be  able  to  say  what  new  words  or 
meanings,  or  what  phraseological  combinations, 
are  due  to  the  influence  of  a  particular  writer, 


vi.]  SOME  MAKERS  OF  ENGLISH  219 

the  effect  of  his  works  on  the  language  may 
be  far  more  important  than  it  can  be  proved 
to  be. 

Among  the  works  that  have  contributed  to 
the  formation  of  modern  English  an  important 
place  must  be  given  to  the  translations  of  the 
Bible,  from  those  of  Tindale  and  Coverdale  in 
the  early  sixteenth  century  to  the  '  Authorized 
Version'  of  1611.  The  effort  to  find  accurate 
expression  for  the  thoughts  of  the  sacred  writers 
called  forth  abundance  of  ingenuity  in  the 
invention  of  new  combinations  of  words ;  and 
the  fact  that  the  Bible  has  for  centuries  been 
the  most  widely  read  and  most  frequently  quoted 
of  books  has  made  it  the  most  fruitful  source 
of  allusive  changes  of  meaning.  The  translations 
made  before  the  invention  of  printing,  especially 
that  of  Purvey  in  1388,  introduced  many 
novelties  of  expression,  but  their  circulation  was 
too  restricted  for  them  to  affect  the  general 
language  as  did  the  later  versions.  Besides,  the 
translations  from  Tindale  onward  were  not  made, 
like  those  of  earlier  times,  from  the  Vulgate, 
but  from  the  Hebrew  and  Greek,  or,  at  least, 
from  Luther's  German  or  from  modern  Latin 
versions  directly  based  on  the  original  texts. 
For  rendering  the  expressions  of  the  Latin  Bible 


220  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

Wyclif  and  Purvey  could  avail  themselves  of  the 
vocabulary  that  had  been  developed  in  English 
religious  literature  during  the  two  centuries  before 
they  wrote.  The  recourse  to  the  originals  re- 
vealed new  shades  of  meaning  for  which  the 
traditional  language  of  piety  seemed  inadequate, 
and  the  translators  strove,  often  with  felicitous 
success,  to  supply  the  new  needs.  To  Coverdale 
we  owe  the  beautiful  combinations  lovingkindness 
and  tender  mercy ;  Tindale  gave  us  long-suffering 
and  peacemaker.  This  last  is  identical  in  etymo- 
logical meaning  with  the  pacificus  of  the  Vulgate  ; 
but  the  Latin  word  had  become  current  in  the  sense 
of  '  peaceable,'  so  that  its  literal  meaning  was 
obscured.  Wyclif  and  Purvey  render  Beati  padfici 
by  'blessid  be  pesible  men.'  But  when  the  six- 
teerith  century  translator  found  himself  confronted 
with  the  Greek  eirenopoioi,  the  invention  of  an  equi- 
valent English  compound  was  naturally  suggested. 
It  will  be  a  surprise  to  most  people  to  learn 
that  such  a  familiar  and,  as  we  should  think, 
indispensable  word  as  beautiful  is  not  known 
to  have  been  used  by  any  writer  before  Tindale. 
He  certainly  did  not  invent  it,  but  there  is  no  doubt 
that  by  introducing  it  into  the  People's  Book 
he  helped  to  bring  it  into  general  use.  Another 
innovation  of  Tindale's  has  left  a  lasting  mark 


vi.]  SOME  MAKERS  OF  ENGLISH  221 

on  the  language.  By  Wyclif  and  Purvey,  the 
Latin  word  presbyter,  designating  an  order  of 
ministers  in  the  Christian  Church,  had  been 
rendered  by  its  anglicized  form  priest.  But  in 
their  translations  priest  stood  also  for  another 
Latin  word,  sacerdos,  which  denoted  the  sacrificing 
ministers  of  the  Old  Testament  This  was  quite 
natural,  because  according  to  the  view  of  the 
whole  Christian  world  at  the  time,  the  priest 
or  presbyter  and  the  bishop  were  the  successors 
in  function  of  the  sacrificing  ministers  of  the 
Jews,  and  in  Church  Latin  the  word  sacerdos 
was  applied  to  both.  When,  however,  the  New 
Testament  came  to  be  translated  into  English 
from  the  Greek  original,  it  was  seen  that  the 
title  presbuteros  was  the  comparative  of  the 
adjective  presbus,  '  old.'  Tindale  retained  priest 
as  the  translation  of  the  Greek  hiereus  (the 
sacerdos  of  the  Vulgate),  but  he  thought  that 
presbuteros  ought  to  be  translated  by  an  English 
word  of  the  same  literal  meaning.  It  cost  him 
much  thought  to  discover  the  right  equivalent. 
In  the  first  edition  of  his  New  Testament  he 
used  senior,  a  rendering  which,  in  his  controversy 
with  Sir  Thomas  More,  he  admitted  to  be  un- 
English  and  unsatisfactory.  In  his  second  edition 
he  substituted  elder,  and  in  this  he  has  been 


222  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

followed  by  all  succeeding  translators  except 
those  of  the  Rhemish  (Roman  Catholic)  version. 
Thus  Tindale's  New  Testament  is  the  source 
of  the  ecclesiastical  sense  of  elder ;  and  the  fact 
that  in  the  English  Bible  priest  never  occurs 
as  the  designation  of  a  Christian  minister  has 
had  a  remarkable  effect  on  the  popular  accepta- 
tion- of  the  word.  Although  the  second  order 
of  the  Anglican  clergy  are  officially  called 
'  priests,'  it  is  only  in  certain  northern  districts 
that  the  people  commonly  apply  the  title  to 
their  parish  clergyman.  To  the  great  majority 
of  Englishmen  the  word  suggests  primarily  either 
a  Roman  Catholic  clergyman,  or  a  minister  of 
Jewish  or  heathen  worship.  Another  noteworthy 
innovation  of  Tindale's  is  his  clever  rendering 
of  tiischrokerdes  by  '  greedy  of  filthy  lucre.'  The 
substantive  lucre,  being  known  to  most  people 
chiefly  as  associated  with  the  familiar  and  ener- 
getic adjective,  has  acquired  a  sinister  sense 
which  does  not  belong  to  it  etymologically,  and 
from  which  the  corresponding  adjective  lucrative 
has  remained  free.  Perhaps  the  most  admirable 
product  of  Tindale's  talent  for  word-making  is 
scapegoat,  which,  though  suggested'  by  a  mis- 
interpretation of  a  Hebrew  proper  name,  is  a 
singularly  felicitous  expression  of  the  intended 


vi.]  SOME  MAKERS  OF  ENGLISH  223 

meaning,    and    in    figurative    use    has    proved    a 
valuable  addition  to  the  language. 

The  Bible  translators  after  Tindale  and  Cover- 
dale  seem  to  have  done  but  little  in  the  invention 
of  words  and  phrases  that  have  become  part  of 
the  language.  But  the  indirect  effect  of  the 
English  Bible  on  the  English  vocabulary  has 
been  progressive  down  to  recent  times.  Many 
words  that  were  already  somewhat  old-fashioned 
in  1611,  and  would  in  the  natural  course  of 
things  soon  have  become  obsolete,  have  been 
preserved  from  extinction  because  of  their  occur- 
rence in  familiar  passages  of  Scripture,  though 
they  now  belong  only  to  elevated  literary  diction. 
Such  are  apparel  and  raiment  for  '  dress '  or 
'  clothes  '  ;  quick  for  '  living ' ;  damsel  for  '  young 
woman  ' ;  travail  for  '  labour.'  The  retention  of 
firmament  (the  Vulgate  firmamentum}  in  the 
first  chapter  of  Genesis  has  given  rise  to  the 
use  of  the  word  as  a  poetical  synonym  for  *  sky.' 
While  phrases  used  with  conscious  allusion  to 
Scriptural  incidents  occur  in  all  European 
languages,  they  are  much  more  frequent  in 
English  than  in  the  languages  of  Roman  Catholic 
countries,  where  the  Bible  is  directly  familiar 
only  to  the  learned.  We  can  speak,  without  fear 
of  not  being  understood,  of  'Gallio-like'  behaviour, 


224  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

'  a  perfect  Babel '  (not  always  with  capital  B), 
'  a  painted  Jezebel,'  '  a  Naboth's  vineyard,'  '  the 
Benjamin  of  the  family,'  '  the  shibboleth  of  a 
party,'  '  Pharisee  and  publican,'  '  the  worship  of 
mammon,'  '  a  leviathan  ship.'  Our  dictionaries 
explain  various  senses  of  Golgotha,  which  are 
founded  on  playful  references  to  the  rendering 
attached  to  the  word  in  the  English  Bible,  '  the 
place  of  a  skull.'  The  appellation  of  '  the  Prodigal 
Son'1  is  current  in  allusive  use  elsewhere  than  in 
England,  but  only  in  English  is  there  a  substan- 
tive prodigal  in  the  sense  of  one  who  has  caused 
grief  to  his  parents  by  abandoning  his  home. 

Many  Bible  phrases,  for  the  most  part  literal 
renderings  of  Hebrew  or  Greek,  have  assumed 
the  character  of  English  idioms,  and  are  often 
used  with  little  or  no  consciousness  of  their  origin. 
Such  are  '  to  cast  pearls  before  swine,'  '  a  labour 
of  love,'  '  a  howling  wilderness,'  '  the  shadow 
of  death,'  'the  eleventh  hour,'  'to  hope  against 
hope'  (a  loose  version  of  Rom.  iv.  1 8).  Like  most 
other  books  that  have  been  widely  popular,  the 

1This  is  not,  strictly  speaking,  a  Bible  phrase,  being  derived  from 
the  Latin  of  early  commentators ;  but  it  occurs  in  the  heading  of 
Luke  xv.  in  the  English  Bible.  The  expression  '  a  good  Samaritan-,' 
which  is  current  also  in  French,  is  similarly  of  mediaeval  and  not  of 
Biblical  origin.  '  To  kill  the  fatted  calf  is  an  allusion  familiar 
throughout  Europe ;  the  wording  under  which  it  has  become 
proverbial  in  English  was  first  employed  by  Tindale.  • 


vi.]  SOME  MAKERS  OF  ENGLISH  225 

English  Bible  has  sometimes  given  rise  to  phrases 
and  uses  of  words  through  misunderstanding. 
The  current  application  of  the  phrase  '  to  see 
eye  to  eye,'  for  '  to  be  of  one  mind,'  has  no 
warrant  in  the  original  context.  We  sometimes 
meet  with  the  expression  '  line  of  things '  for  a 
person's  special  department  of  activity  or  study- 
The  passage  on  which  this  is  founded  is  :  "  And 
not  to  boast  in  another  man's  line  of  things 
made  ready  to  our  hand"  (2  Cor.  x.  16),  where 
the  intended  meaning  would  have  been  clearer 
if  commas  had  been  inserted  after  the  words 
'  boast '  and  '  line.'  The  common  saying  :  '  He 
that  runs  may  read '  is  a  misquotation  of  "  That 
he  may  run  that  readeth  it  "  (Hab.  ii.  2)  which 
has  a  wholly  different  meaning.  A  striking 
instance  of  word-making  through  misunderstanding 
is  helpmeet.  In  the  Bible  of  1611  the  Hebrew 
words  of  Gen.  ii.  1 8  were  literally  rendered  "  an 
help  meet  [z>.  fit,  suitable]  for  him."  Readers 
mistook  the  two  words  help  meet  for  a  compound  ; 
and  so  help  meet  became  current  as  a  synonym 
for  one's  '  partner  in  life.'  People  have  been 
known  to  suppose  that  it  meant  "  one  who  helps 
to  '  make  ends  meet ' " ;  but  commonly  when 
the  word  has  been  analysed  at  all,  the  second 
element  has  been  imagined  to  be  synonymous 


226  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

with  mate,  or  perhaps  an  incorrect  form  of  it. 
This  notion  suggested  the  formation  of  helpmate, 
which  is  a  very  good  and  correctly-made  com- 
pound, though  it  did  originate  in  a  blunder. 

It  might  well  be  expected  that  in  any  notice 
of  the  literary  Makers  of  English  a  large  place 
must  be  given  to  Chaucer.  And  indeed  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  his  writings  had  a  powerful 
influence  on  the  language ;  but  it  is  singularly 
difficult  to  prove  this  by  definite  examples.  It 
would  be  easy  to  give  lists  of  words  and  ex- 
pressions which  are  used  by  Chaucer,  and,  so 
far  as  we  know,  not  by  any  earlier  writer.  We 
cannot  doubt  that  a  large  proportion  of  these 
were  really  brought  into  literary  use  by  him  ; 
a  poet  with  so  much  of  new  thought  to  express, 
and  so  solicitous  for  fulness  .of  expression,  could 
not  but  avail  himself  of  the  resources  which  his 
knowledge  of  foreign  tongues  supplied  for  the 
enrichment  of  his  native  language  ;  and  he  must 
often  have  found  new  and  felicitous  applications 
for  words  already  current.  Yet  in  individual 
instances  we  can  seldom  feel  sure  that  in  the 
use  of  this  or  that  word  he  had  not  some  English 
example  before  him.  Further,  when  we  see  how 
much  nearly  all  later  English  poets  have  learned 


vi.]  SOME  MAKERS   OF  ENGLISH  227 

from  Chaucer,  it  seems  certain  that  there  must 
be  a  great  deal  of  the  modern  poetic  vocabulary 
which  owes  its  currency  to  his  example.  But 
here,  again,  it  is  hard  to  find  particular  instances 
that  are  not  open  to  doubt.  Hardly  any  of  his 
phrases — except  "  After  the  scole  of  Stratford- 
atte-Bowe " — can  be  said  to  have  become  part 
of  the  language  in  the  sense  in  which  this  can 
be  said  of  scores  of  phrases  of  the  English 
Bible.  For  these  reasons  the  share  of  Chaucer 
in  the  making  of  English  must  be  passed  over 
as  not  admitting  of  detailed  illustration. 

Spenser's  influence  on  literary  English  is,  if  not 
really  greater,  at  least  more  easy  to  trace  than  that 
of  the  poet  whom  he  acknowledged  as  his  master. 
While  Chaucer  was  content  to  write  in  the  language 
of  his  own  time,  and  perhaps  never  consciously 
invented  a  new  word  or  used  an  old  one  in  a  new 
meaning,  Spenser  deliberately  framed  for  his  own 
use  an  artificial  dialect,  the  words  and  forms  of  which 
were  partly  drawn  from  the  language  of  an  older 
time  and  from  provincial  speech,  and  partly  invented 
by  himself.  Ben  Jonson's  often  quoted  saying 
that  "  Spenser  writ  no  language "  is  in  a  certain 
sense  quite  correct  Yet  the  choice  of  this 
peculiar  diction  was  no  mere  affectation,  nor  was 


228  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

it  due  to  any  pedantic  fondness  for  philological 
curiosities.  Any  one  who  justly  appreciates 
Spenser's  poetry  must  feel  that  his  language, 
'  pseudo-archaic '  as  it  may  be  called,  was  the 
only  fitting  vehicle  for  his  tone  of  thought  and 
feeling.  It  is  true  that  by  far  the  greater  number 
of  the  words  which  he  invented  or  revived  have 
now  become  obsolete.  But  the  literary  vocabulary 
of  the  present  day  retains  not  a  few  traces  of  his 
influence.  The  familiar  word  braggadocio  is  an 
allusion  to  the  proper  name  of  the  vainglorious 
knight  in  the  Faerie  Queene.  The  phrase  "  squire 
of  dames"  comes  from  the  same  poemr  though 
probably  few  of  those  who  use  it  have  any 
suspicion  of  its  source.  The  adjective  blatant 
appears  first  in  Spenser,  and  it  is  not  easy  to 
guess  its  derivation ;  but  it  is  now  universally 
understood.  Another  word  that  seems  to  have 
been  invented  by  Spenser  is  elfin.  Dr.  Murray 
has  traced  the  singular  history  of  derring-do, 
which  was  taken  from  Spenser  by  Sir  Walter 
Scott,  and  through  his  use  of  it  has  become  one  of 
the  favourite  words  of  modern  chivalric  romance. 
It  originated  from  a  passage  in  which  Chaucer 
says  that  Troilus  was  second  to  no  man  in 
"  dorring  do  \i.e.  in  daring  to  do]  that  longeth  to 
a  knight."  The  passage  was  paraphrased  by  Lyd- 


vi.]  SOME  MAKERS  OF  ENGLISH  229 

gate  in  his  Troy-book,  and  in  the  early  editions  of 
that  work  the  word  dorring  was  misprinted  as 
derrynge.  Not  unnaturally,  Spens"er  mistook  der- 
rynge  doe  for  a  substantive  (meaning,  as  his  friend 
E.K.  says  in  his  '  gloss  '  to  the  Shepherd's  Calendar, 
"  manhood  and  chevalrie "),  and  employs  it  very 
frequently.  The  blunder  has  enriched  the  English 
language  with  a  happily  expressive  word.  Another 
of  Spenser's  debts  to  Lydgate  is  gride,  which  E.K. 
explains  by  "  to  pierce."  Possibly  it  may  have 
arisen  from  a  scribal  error  for  girde,  to  smite.  In 
imitation  of  Spenser  the  word  has  been  used  by 
many  subsequent  poets,  who  have  found  something 
in  its  sound  that  seemed  fitted  to  express  the 
passage  of  a  cutting  weapon  through  flesh  and 
bones.  Shelley  and  Tennyson  have  adopted  it 
to  convey  the  notion  of  harsh  or  grating  move- 
ment. 

We  now  come  to  the  greatest  name  in  our 
literature.  Unrivalled  in  so  many  other  ways, 
Shakspere  has  no  equal  with  regard  to  the  extent 
and  profundity  of  his  influence  on  the  English 
language.  The  greatness  of  this  influence  does 
not  consist  in  the  number  of  new  words  which  he 
added  to  the  literary  vocabulary,  though  we  have 
already  had  something  to  say  of  the  abundance 


230  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

and  felicity  of  the  compounds  which  he  invented, 
but  in  the  multitude  of  phrases  derived  from  his 
writings  which  have  entered  into  the  texture  of  the 
diction  of  literature  and  daily  conversation.  We 
might  call  them  "household  words,"  without  re- 
membering that  it  is  from  himself  that  we  have 
learned  this  expression.  It  would  be  possible  to 
fill  whole  pages  with  the  enumeration  of  the 
Shaksperian  allusions  which  are  in  every-day  use. 
'  Caviare  to  the  general,'  '  men  in  buckram,' 
'  coign  of  vantage,'  '  a  tower  of  strength/  '  full  of 
sound  and  fury,'  '  a  Daniel  come  to  judgment,' 
'  yeoman  service,'  '  the  sere  and  yellow  leaf,' 
'  hoist  with  his  own  petard/  '  to  eat  the  leek/ 
'  curled  darlings/  '  to  the  manner  born/  '  moving 
accidents/  '  a  Triton  among  the  minnows/  '  one's 
poufid  of  flesh/  '  to  wear  one's  heart  upon  one's 
sleeve/  '  Sir  Oracle/  '  to  gild  refined  gold/ 
'  metal  more  attractive ' — all  these  phrases,  and 
hundreds  of  others  from  the  same  source,  may 
now  fairly  be  regarded  as  idioms  of  the  English 
language.  If  the  reader  thinks  that  this  is  saying 
too  much,  let  him  ask  himself  whether  any  man 
could  be  rightly  acknowledged  to  be  thoroughly 
master  of  modern  literary  English  who  was 
ignorant  of  the  customary  import  and  application 
of  these  expressions. 


Vi.]  SOME  MAKERS  OF  ENGLISH  231 

One  Shaksperian  phrase,  "  to  out- Herod  Herod," 
has  not  only  become  current  in  its  original  form, 
tut  has  become  the  model  after  which  a  large 
number  of  other  expressions  have  been  framed. 
Among  the  many  examples  that  might  be  quoted 
from  eminent  writers  are  "  to  out-Bentley  Bentley," 
"  to  out-Milton  Milton,"  "  to  out-Darwin  Darwin." 
Shakspere  seems  in  truth  to  have  had  a  curious 
fondness  for  the  invention  of  compound  verbs  with 
out-,  expressing  the  notion  of  surpassing  or  exceed- 
ing. All  the  words  of  this  kind  that  exist  in 
modern  English  appear  to  have  been  either  framed 
by  him,  or  by  later  writers  in  imitation  of  his 
example. 

It  would  be  easy  to  give  a  somewhat  long  list  of 
words,  such  as  control  (as  a  noun),  credent,  dwindle, 
homekeeping,  illume,  lonely,  orb  (in  the  sense  of 
'  globe '),  which  were  used  by  Shakspere,  and  have 
not  yet  been  found  in  any  earlier  writer.  But 
such  an  enumeration  would  probably  give  a 
greatly  exaggerated  impression  of  the  extent  of 
Shakspere's  contributions  to  the  vocabulary  of 
English.  The  literature  of  his  age  has  not  been 
examined  with  sufficient  minuteness  to  justify  in 
any  instance  the  assertion  that  a  new  word  was 
first  brought  into  literary  use  by  him.  Yet  the 
fact  that  it  is  in  his  works  that  we  so  often  find 


232  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

the  earliest  known  examples  of  words  that  are  now 
current  is  at  any  rate  instructive,  as  showing  the 
keenness  of  his  perception  of  the  needs  of  the 
language. 

When  we  turn  from  Shakspere  to  Milton,  we 
find  striking  evidence  of  the  truth  of  what  we 
have  already  remarked,  that  there  is  no  constant 
relation  between  a  writer's  literary  greatness,  or 
even  the  greatness  of  his  fame,  and  the  extent  of 
his  influence  on  the  language  in  which  his  works 
are  written.  For,  both  in  the  estimation  of  the 
multitude  and  in  the  judgment  of  critics,  Milton's 
right  to  rank  as  second  of  English  poets  is  hardly 
questioned  ;  and  yet,  while  Shakspere  has  con- 
tributed innumerable  phrases  to  the  common 
treasury  of  English  diction,  the  Miltonic  expres- 
sions that  have  really  become  part  of  the  lan- 
guage are  extremely  few.  There  are,  of  course, 
many  passages  of  Milton  that  are  very  familiar  as 
quotations  ;  but  there  are  not  many  of  his  com- 
binations of  words  which  we  commonly  use,  as  we 
do  scores  of  those  that  are  found  in  Shakspere  or 
the  Bible,  without  a  distinct  consciousness  of  their 
origin.  There  are  some  few  from  Paradise  Lost : 
"  to  hide  one's  diminished  head,"  "  darkness 
visible,"  "  the  human  face  divine,"  "  barbaric  pearl 


vi.]  SOME  MAKERS  OF  ENGLISH  233 

and  gold,"  "  that  bad  eminence."  From  //  Pen- 
seroso  we  have  "  a  dim  religious  light " ;  the 
companion  poem  has  furnished  one  phrase, 
"  the  light  fantastic  toe,"  which  few  who  use 
it  ever  think  of  associating  with  the  grave 
Puritan  poet.  "  Men  of  light  and  leading "  is 
Burke's  adaptation  (brought  into  popular  vogue 
by  Disraeli)  of  an  expression  occurring  in  one  of 
Milton's  little-read  controversial  pamphlets.  Per- 
haps, in  estimating  the  debt  which  the  English 
language  owes  to  Milton,  we  ought  to  take  into 
account  the  abundant  material  which  his  works 
afford  for  effective  literary  allusion.  "  Ithuriel's 
spear,"  "  the  last  infirmity  of  noble  minds," 
"  writ  large,"  the  often  misquoted  "  fresh  woods 
and  pastures  new,"  are  examples  of  the  many 
echoes  of  Miltonic  poetry  which  abound  in 
subsequent  literature.  Of  new  words  and  senses 
of  words  brought  into  literary  use  by  Milton 
it  is  not  possible  to  find  any  considerable 
number.  Gloom,  in  its  modern  sense  of  '  dark- 
ness,' may  probably  be  his  invention.  Scottish 
writers  had  used  the  word  for  '  a  scowl  or  frown,' 
and  gloomy  (derived  perhaps  from  the  verb  to 
gloom}  had  been  current  since  the  end  of  the 
sixteenth  century.  Shakspere's  "  gloomy  woods  " 
may  have  suggested  to  Milton  the  formation  of 


234  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

the  substantive,  which  occurs  nine  times  in  his 
poems,  but  is  otherwise  unknown  before  the 
eighteenth  century.  Pandemonium,  invented  by 
Milton  as  the  proper  name  of  the  capital  city  of 
Hell,  the  general  place  of  assembly  of  the  devils, 
is  now  freely  used  without  any  allusion  to  its 
literary  source.  That  Milton  had  a  genuine 
faculty  for  word-making,  even  though  he  chose  to 
exercise  it  sparingly,  is  sufficiently  proved  by  his 
invention  of  anarch  to  describe  Satan  as  the 
essential  spirit  of  anarchy.  Three  later  poets, 
Pope,  Byron,  and  Shelley,  have  availed  themselves 
of  this  Miltonic  word,  and  have  used  it  with 
striking  effect. 

There  are  several  words  of  Latin  origin,  e.g. 
horrent,  impassive,  irresponsible,  which,  so  far  as 
is"  known,  occur  first  in  Milton's  works,  and 
which  it  is  possible  that  he  may  really  have 
introduced.  This,  however,  is  a  matter  of  little 
or  no  importance  in  relation  to  the  estimation 
of  the  amount  of  Milton's  share  in  the  making 
of  the  language.  In  the  middle  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  words  of  this  kind  were,  to 
repeat  an  expression  which  we  have  already 
used,  potentially  English  ;  that  is  to  say,  the 
right  of  forming  them  at  will,  by  anglicizing 
the  form  of  Latin  words  or  by  attaching  a  Latin 


vi.]  SOME  MAKERS  OF  ENGLISH  235 

prefix  or  suffix  to  a  word  derived  from  that 
language,  was  in  practice  generally  assumed  and 
conceded.  If  Milton  had  not  used  these  words, 
some  other  writer  of  the  period  would  almost 
certainly  have  done  so  ;  and  they  may  quite 
possibly  have  been  employed  by  several  writers, 
without  any  consciousness  either  of  innovation 
or  of  following  a  precedent. 

There  are  other  writers,  besides  those  we 
have  mentioned,  whose  influence  on  the  vocabu- 
lary and  phraseology  of  literary  English  has 
been  of  great  importance.  We  cannot,  how- 
ever, attempt  to  give  here  any  account  of  their 
respective  contributions,  because  the  preliminary 
investigations  on  which  such  an  account  must 
be  based  have  not  yet  been  made.  Among 
the  authors  who  deserve  special  attention  on 
account  of  the  effect  which  their  works  have 
had  on  the  language — either  because  of  their 
boldness  in  the  introduction  of  new  words  and 
senses  of  words,  and  the  extent  to  which  their 
innovations  have  found  acceptance,  or  because 
their  writings  have  afforded  abundant  material 
for  literary  allusion — may  be  mentioned  Lyd- 
gate,  Malory,  and  Caxton  in  the  fifteenth 
century  ;  Sir  Thomas  More  and  Lyly  in  the 


236  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

sixteenth  century ;  Bacon,  Philemon  Holland, 
and  Sir  Thomas  Browne  in  the  seventeenth 
century ;  and  Pope  and  Dr.  Johnson  in  the 
eighteenth  century.  Coming  down  to  later 
times,  we  may  mention  Sir  Walter  Scott, 
whose  writings  brought  into  general  use  many 
words  which  he  found  in  older  authors  or  in 
Scottish  use,  such  as  raid,  glamour,  gramarye. 
The  works  of  Carlyle  present  an  almost  unex- 
ampled abundance  of  new  compounds  and 
derivatives,  largely  formed  in  imitation  of  Ger- 
man ;  and  although  comparatively  few  of  those 
have  won  general  acceptance,  yet  his  influence 
has  been  effective  in  promoting  a  freer  use  of 
native  English  formatives  than  was  tolerated  in 
the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Some 
few  words  of  his  native  Scottish  dialect,  also, 
such  as  outcome,  have  become  familiar  English 
from  their  occurrence  in  his  writings. 

The  proper  names  of  fiction  and  the  drama 
have  not  unfrequently  obtained  a  degree  of 
currency  in  allusive  use  which  entitles  them  to 
a  place  in  the  history  of  the  English  language. 
Bunyan's  'Vanity  Fair'  and  'The  Slough  of 
Despond,'  and  Defoe's  '  Man  Friday,'  are  virtually 
part  of  the  English  vocabulary,  though  they 


vi.]  SOME  MAKERS  OF  ENGLISH  237 

may  not  quite  come  within  the  province  of  the 
lexicographer.  Swift's  Gulliver's  Travels  has  given 
us  the  words  Lilliputian,  Brobdingnagian,  and 
Yahoo,  the  first  of  which,  at  any  rate,  is  familiar 
to  all  educated  English  people.  Malapropism, 
from  the  name  of  Mrs.  Malaprop  in  Sheridan's 
play  of  The  Rivals,  is  the  recognised  appella- 
tion for  a  species  of  blunder  which  is  very 
commonly  met  with.  The  names  of  certain 
characters  in  Dickens's  novels  have  given  rise 
to  derivatives  in  general  use  :  every  one  knows 
what  is  meant  when  we  speak  of  '  Pecksniffian 
morality,'  or  of  taking  a  word  '  in  a  Pick- 
wickian sense '  ;  and  gamp,  as  a  jocular  word 
for  '  umbrella,'  may  very  likely  survive  when 
the  allusion  to  Mrs.  Gamp  has  ceased  to  be 
generally  intelligible.  The  proverbial  use  of 
the  names  of  personages  in  plays  has  often 
remained  current  long  after  the  works  from 
which  they  are  taken  have  been  forgotten. 
Few  persons  have  read,  or  even  heard  of, 
Rowe's  Fair  Penitent,  Mrs.  Centlivre's  A  Bold 
Stroke  for  a  Wife,  or  Morton's  Speed  the 
Plough,  but  everybody  knows  the  expressions  '  a 
gay  Lothario '  and  '  the  real  Simon  Pure,'  and 
'  Mrs.  Grundy '  is  constantly  referred  to  as  the 
personification  of  the  tyranny  of  social  opinion, 


238  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH  [CHAP. 

It  is  not  unlikely  that  the  future  historian 
of  the  English  language  may  find  that  its 
development  in  the  nineteenth  century  has 
been  less  powerfully  affected  by  the  really 
great  writers  of  the  period  than  by  authors  of 
inferior  rank,  both  British  and  American,  who 
have  had  the  knack  of  inventing  new  turns 
of  expression  which  commended  themselves  to 
general  imitation.  There  never  was  a  time 
when  a  clever  novelty  in  combination  of  words, 
or  an  ingenious  perversion  of  the  accepted 
meaning  of  a  word,  had  so  good  a  chance  of 
becoming  a  permanent  possession  of  the  language, 
as  now.  In  no  former  age  was  there  such  an 
abundance  of  writing  of  a  designedly  ephemeral 
character,  intended  merely  for  the  amusement 
jof  an  idle  moment.  The  modern  taste  in  style 
demands  incessant  variety  of  expression  ;  the 
same  thing  must  never,  if  it  can  be  avoided,  be 
denoted  in  consecutive  sentences  by  the  same 
word  :  and  so  those  who  are  engaged  in  supplying 
the  popular  demand  for  '  reading  matter '  eagerly 
adopt  from  each  other  their  new  devices  for 
escaping  monotony  of  diction.  When  we  con- 
sider that  the  literature  which  is  for  all  time 
is  read  by  comparatively  few,  while  the  literature 
which  is  for  the  passing  moment  is  read  by  all, 


vi.]  SOME  MAKERS  OF  ENGLISH  239 

we  may  easily  be  tempted  to  think  that  the 
future  of  literary  English  is  in  the  hands  of 
writers  of  defective  culture  and  little  seriousness 
of  purpose,  and  that  the  language  must  suffer 
grave  injury  in  the  loss  of  its  laboriously  won 
capacities  for  precision,  and  in  the  debasement 
of  words  of  noble  import  by  unworthy  use. 
While  these  apprehensions  are  not  wholly  un- 
founded, there  is  much  to  be  said  on  the  other 
side.  Even  the  much-decried  '  newspaper  English' 
has,  in  its  better  forms,  some  merits  of  its  own. 
Writers  whose  work  must  be  read  rapidly  if 
it  is  to  be  read  at  all  have  a  strong  motive  for 
endeavouring  not  to  be  obscure  ;  and  the  results 
of  this  endeavour  may  be  seen  in  the  recent 
development  of  many  subtle  contrivances  of 
sentence-structure,  serving  to  prevent  the  reader 
from  feeling  even  a  momentary  hesitation  in 
apprehending  the  intended  construction.1  We 
may  rest  assured  that  wherever  worthy  thought 
and  feeling  exist,  they  will  somehow  fashion  for 
themselves  a  worthy  medium  of  expression  ;  and 
unless  the  English-speaking  peoples  have  entered 
on  a  course  of  intellectual  decline,  there  is  no 

1  One  good  instance  of  this  is  afforded  by  the  frequency  with 
which  expressions  like  'the  fact  that,'  'the  circumstance  that,' 
are  no\v  employed  where  formerly  a  clause  would  have  stood 
alone  as  the  subject  of  a  sentence, 


240  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH         [CHAP.  vi. 

reason  to  fear  that  their  language  will  on  the 
whole  suffer  deterioration.  In  the  daily-increasing 
multitude  of  new  forms  of  expression,  even 
though  it  may  be  largely  due  to  the  unwholesome 
appetite  for  novelty,  there  must  be  not  a  little 
that  will  be  found  to  answer  to  real  needs,  and 
will  survive  and  be  developed,  while  what  is 
valueless  will  perish  as  it  deserves.  It  is  there- 
fore perhaps  not  an  unfounded  hope  that  the 
future  history  of  the  language  will  be  a  history 
of  progress,  and  that  our  posterity  will  speak 
a  better  English — better  in  its  greater  fitness 
for  the  uses  for  which  language  exists — than 
the  English  of  to-day. 


INDEX 


-able,  137 

Accusative,  45 

Adjectives,   inflexions  of,   5,  9, 

49,  50 
-age,  137 
-al,  96,  98,  137 
alive,  46,  151 
alone,  151 
Ambiguities,    35,    44,    75,    76, 

I 88,  190 
-an,  96,  98 
ante-,  prefix,  141 
anti-,  prefix,  140 
apolaustic,  101 
-ation,  136 
-ative,  137 

Attributive  nouns,  63 
Auxiliary  verbs,  66-73 
ayenbite,  119 

Back-formation,  142 
Bacon,  Francis,  236 
bant,  144 
bath,  bathe,  133 
fe,  auxiliary,  68,  69 
be-,  prefix,  134 
beautiful,  220 
179 


Bible,  English,  56,  72,  219-226 

borough,  213 

for,  178 

braggadocio,  228 

brethren,  41 

Brevity,  English  love  of,  78,  139, 

147 

Brobdingnagian,  237 
Browne,  Sir  T.,  236 
Browning,  122,  127 
burrow,  213 
bus,  148 
Byron,  127,  234 

cab,  149 

Carlyle,  119,  124,  236 

carry,  178 

Caxton,  20 1,  235 

Celtic  words  in  English,  82 

chair,  200 

chap,  150 

Chapman,  Thomas,  127 

Chaucer,  50,  51,  55,  226 

-chester,  81 

children,  41 

Chinese  words  in  English,  104 

Christmas,  117 

«V,  149 


242 


INDEX 


CD-,  prefix,  141 
Composition,  111-128 
Compound  words,  65,  1 1 1 
Confluent  development,  22 
Coverdale,  219,  220 
cry,  189 
culprit,  153 
cycle,  147 

daisy,  117 

dam,  91 

Danish  influence  on  English,  29, 

31,  83,  84 
Danish-English  (in  nth  century), 

31 

Dative,  45,  47 
Declension  of  nouns,  35-46 

,,         of  adjectives,  9, 49,  50 
deer,  200 

Derivation,  in,  128-154 
derring-do,  228 
Dickens,  237 
dis-,  prefix,  139 
Divergent  development,  22,  24 
dizzy,  198 
do,  auxiliary,  71 
Domesday  Book,  33 
drive,  189 

Dropping  of  sounds,  23 
dug,  strong  preterite,  52 
dull,  174 
dun,  82 

Durham  Gospels,  37 
Dutch  language,   4  ;    words  in 

English,  1 02 

edit,  144 
een,  41 
egregious,  209 


elder,  221 

elfin,  228 

emergency,  207 

Emotional  connotation,  2OI 

en-,  prefix,  140 

enormous,  201 

-es,  plural  ending,  35 

-ess,  feminine  ending,  58 

ex-,  prefix,  141 

extra,  150 

extraordinary,  201 

extravagant,  201 

yt,  37,  41 

face,  91 
fast,  161,  210 
father-in-law,  90,  115 
fellow,  191 
jKnce,  151 
fund,  fender,  151 
fiend,  197 
yf/^,  204 
yfwe,  162 

Fine  arts,  terms  of,  102 
firmament,  223 
flour,  fiower,  213 

199 

/,  169,  205 
French  influence  on  English,  33, 

58,  85-92,  136 
Future  tense,  67,  72 

gamp,  237 

gaol,  87 

Gender,  5,  9,  47-50 

Generalization  of  meaning,  177- 

180 

Genitive,  59,  60,  61 
gent,  149 


INDEX 


German,  compared  with  English, 

1-7,  55,  64,  121,  162-9 
German  words  in  English,  103 
Germanic,  Primitive,  4,  17 
ghost,  194 
giddy,  198 
glad,  165 
glass,  183,  184 
gloom,  233 
go,  182 
Golgotha,  224 
gospel,  117 

grandfather,  grandmother,  90 
grander e,  grandame,  90 
great,  202 

Greek  words  in  English,  97-101 
£»Tcfe,  229 
grievous,  203 
Group-genitive,  6 1 
grovel,  143 

harbour,  190 

^attf,  auxiliary,  67 

/fo,  as  feminine  pronoun,  54 

helpmate,  226 

helpmeet,  225 

AZ.T,  as  neuter  possessive,  56 

hit,  i~6 

holiday,  117 

Holland,  Philemon,  236 

house,  187 

housen,  41 

hubris,  IOI 

husband,  117 

Inclusive  senses,  186-190 

*'«">?,  153 

Indo-Germanic  language,  18,  112 

infra  dig,  153 


ingemiity,  206 

inter-,  prefix,  141 

Irony,    a  cause   of   changes   of 

meaning,  209 
-ish,  134 
ism,  147 

Italian  words  in  English,  102,  103 
its,  56 

Japanese  words  in  English,  104 
jews'  -harp,  115 
Johnson,  Dr.,  213,  236 

keen,  173 
-kin,  138 
kine,  41 
kudos,  101 


204 

Latin  words  in  English,  8l,  86,  92 
law,  83 
Law,  terms  of,  88 

-£',  139 
lilliputian,  237 

-#«f,  *38 
little,  203 
//W,  adj.,  151 
loathe,  205 
/W,  195 

lovingkindness,  22O 
Low  German  language,  4 
lucre,  222 

-(P,  '35 

Lydgate,  229,  235 
Lyly,  235 

maffick,  144 

malapropism,  237 

Malay  words  in  English,  104 

Malory,  235 


244 


INDEX 


Meaning,  changes  of,  160 

mend,  151 

-ment,  137 

Middle  English,  meaning  of  the 

term,  8 

Military  terms,  89 
Milton,  232-235 
miss,  149 
Misunderstanding,    a    cause    of 

changes  of  meaning,  206 
Mixture  of  peoples,  19,  25-28 
More,  Sir  Thomas,  235 
Music,  terms  of,  102 

nem.  con.,  153 

nestle,  143 

Newspaper  English,  208,  239 

non-,  prefix,  141 

Norman  Conquest,  32 

Northumbrian  dialect,  37,  38 

nous,  101 

°f>  44,  59 

Old  English,  meaning  of  the 
t£fm,  8 ;  dialects  of,  28 ;  in- 
flexions of,  9,  24,  35,  36-40, 
43;  pronunciation  of,  n,  12; 
specimen  of,  II 

Old  High  German,  17 

ologyy  J47 

Onomatopoeia,  152-156 
'  Ormulum,'  the,  48 
-ous,  96,  98 
outbreak,  122 
outcome,  236 
oxen,  41 
oxygen,  108 

pandemonium,  234 
Farasynthetic  derivatives,  1 20 


peacemaker,  220 
percent,  153 
Perfect  tense,  67 
Periods  of  the  English  language,  8 
phiz,  150 

Phonetic  change,  20-25,  117 
Phonetic  laws,  21 
Phrasal  genitive,  60 
pipe,  177,  181 
Place-names,  117 
Plattdeutsch  language,  4 
Plural,  endings  of,  40 
Plurals,  irregular,  42 
Poetry,  diction  of,  127 
Pope,  234,  236 

Portuguese  words  in  English,  103 
post-,  prefix,  141 
pre-,  prefix,  141 
Prefixes,  139;  dropped,  150 
premises,  2Ob 
preposterous,  207 
priest,  221 
pro-,  prefix,  140 
prodigal,  224 
Pronouns,  46,  54-58 
Pronunciation  of  Old   English, 

II,    12 

pros  and  cons,  153. 

re-,  prefix,  139 

read,  re.de,  1 68,  212 

Relationship(family),termsof,  91 

Religion,  terms  of,  82 

Root-creation,  154 

Russian  words  in  English,  103 

-s,  ending  of  plural,  35 
-'s,  -s',  genitival  endings,  35 
sad,  164 
sapient,  210 


INDEX 


245 


Scandinavian  languages,  4;  words 

in  English,  83,  104 
scapegoat,  222 

Science,  terms  of,  too,  107-109 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  236 
Shakspere,  56,  126,  229 
shall,  auxiliary,  57,  72 

*ke,  55 
shoon,  41 

Shortening,    a   mode   of    word- 
formation,  147 
silly,  210 

Simplification  of  Accidence,  17 
sire,  91 
size,  150 
Slang,  175 
slay,  176 

small,  204 

smell,  192 

smite,  176 

Spanish  words  in  English,  103 

Specialization  of  meaning,  180 

Spelling,  34,  212 

Spenser,  126,  127,  227 

spite,  152 

sport,  152 

stain,  151 

stench,  stink,  192,  205 

stool,  200 

strike,  176 

Strong  verbs,  63 

sub-,  prefix,  141 

Subjunctive,  53 

Substantives,  inflexion  of,  35-46 

Suffixes,  133 


Swift,  Jonathan,  237 
Symbolism,  phonetic,  156-159 

tend,  151 
Tennyson,  127,  147 

tfay,  55 

thou,  62 

thrash,  176 

throw,  175 

tide,  1 68 

Tindale,  56,  219 

Titles  of  nobility,  89 

town,  1 66 

Trades,  designations  of,  90 

Tradition,  influence  of,  19 

transpire,  208 

travail,  travel,  212 

Turkish  words  in  English,  103 

un-,  prefix,  134 
upkeep,  124 
uptake,  124 

Verbs,  conjugation  of,  5,  66-73 
vie,  151 

•wear,  188 

West  Saxon,  37,  39 

•whilom,  47 

wig,  149 

•will,  auxiliary,  1 1 2 

Word-stems,  112 

Wordsworth,  127 

write,  167 

Wyclif,  220 

yahoo,  237 
you,  62,  63 


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